DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

BY   JOSEPH    D.  WILSON,  D.D. 


S.f^/oS. 


^  PRINCETON,  N.  J.  *^ 

Presented    h{~^\^eA  .  G  TY?  .  &  V-Arr\  CA. 
Division  ..■rX^..',^...\.'^  ^  O 


rA 


DID   DANIEL   WRITE 
DANIEL? 


The   Genuineness    and   Authenticity 

of  the   Book  of  Daniel 

Discussed 


JOSEPH    D.  WILSON,  D.  D. 


PROFESSOR    OF   HISTORY    IN    THE   THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY 
OF    THE    REFORMED    EPISCOPAL    CHURCH 


Charles  C.   Cook 

150   nassau    street 
new  york,  n.  y. 


TO 

ELEANOR  B.  RAINEY 

Through  whose    encouragement   this 
book   is   published 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 7 

The  Question     ii 

Alleged  Inaccuracies      19 

Belshazzar 19,  22 

Belshazzar's  father? 19,  28 

Nebuchadnezzar  termed  king  too  early  19,  33 

Discrepancy  with  Jeremiah i9>  34 

List  of  kings  imperfect i9)  38 

Two  languages  in  the  book 20,  39 

Persian  words 20,  41 

Greek  words 20,  41 

Angelology 20,  46 

Darius  the  Mede 20,  52 

"  Chaldeans "  wrongly  applied    .    .    .  21,57 

The  Hebrew  favors  late  date   .    .    .    .  21,59 

The  forgotten  dream 21,  65 

Spelling  of  Nebuchadnezzar 21,65 

Daniel  too  young 21,  67 

"  Other  Objections 68 

Laudatory  expressions 68 

Silence  of  post  exilic  prophets 70 

Apocryphal  Literature 71 

Ecclesiasticus 74 

5 


CONTENTS 

The  Canon 80 

Daniel  not  in  the  "  Prophets  "    ....        82 

Evidence  Sustaining  Daniel 87 

The  captivity 88 

Written  in  Babylon 88 

Ezekiel's  witness 91 

Ezra — Nehemiah 96 

Baruch  96 

Maccabees 97 

Josephus TOO 

The  Magi .    .        .    .  106 

Nebuchadnezzar's  madness 107 

Subjective  Considerations iic 

Apocalypses  late  in  time 112 

Prediction  impossible 115 

The  supernatural 118 

The  Prophecies 122 

The  image 124 

The  four  beasts 125 

The  ram  and  he-goat 129 

The  seventy  weeks 134 

Testimony  of  Our  Lord 150 

Why  Speakest  Thou  in  Parables  ? 153 


INTRODUCTION 

Recent  years  have  witnessed,  among 
scholars,  a  questioning  of  the  traditional 
dates  and  authorship  of  many  of  the 
books  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  dates 
of  some  of  the  books  have  been  changed 
by  more  than  a  thousand  years.  Books 
attributed  hitherto  to  one  author  have 
been  declared  of  composite  authorship ; 
the  various  conjectured  authors  living 
hundreds  of  years  apart.  Much  ingenuity 
has  been  exercised  in  tracing  the  supposed 
originals,  emendations  and  recensions. 

As  might  be  expected,  there  are  wide 
differences  of  opinion  among  those  who 
seek  to  reconstruct  the  books ;  there  being 
no  data  upon  which  to  found  opinion  ex- 
cept the  books  themselves — no  contempo- 
rary Hebrew  literature  of  any  kind;  the 
subjective  predilections  of  the  literary 
critics  forming  a  large  part  of  the  critical 
apparatus.     The  results  of  criticism  based 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DAXIEE? 

on  such  incomplete  and  variable  evidence 
can  hardly  be  conclusive,  and  it  occasions 
no  surprise  to  find  criticism  criticising  it- 
self and  critics  changing  their  opinions 
from  time  to  time. 

Among  the  books,  whose  date  and  au- 
thorship are  challenged,  is  Daniel.  But 
here  there  is  a  considerable  consensus  of 
opinion  against  the  traditional  date. 
!Many  persons  who  reject  altogether  the 
radical  theories  concerning  the  Penta- 
teuch have  accepted  the  new  view  about 
Daniel,  and  many  more  are  holding  judg- 
ment in  suspense. 

It  is  probable  that  very  few,  except 
those  who  are  professionally  engaged  in 
literary  criticism^  have  access  to  all  the 
arguments  against  the  authenticity  and 
Cfenuineness  of  Daniel.  Even  some  of  the 
literary  critics  appear  to  form  their  opin- 
ions simply  upon  the  opinions  of  other 
critics. 

This  essay  is  designed  to  furnish  the 
student  w^th  all  the  considerations  which 
have  led  critics  to  displace  Daniel  from  its 

8 


DID  DANIEL  WTtlTE  DANIEL? 

traditional  position.  Some  of  the  argu- 
ments will  appear  of  no  weight — perhaps 
they  will  all  so  appear.  The  reader  may 
judge  when  he  sees  the  arguments.  But 
as  this  is  not  a  one-sided  plea,  the  replies 
to  the  above  adverse  considerations  will 
also  be  presented  and  the  arguments  for 
Daniel  will  be  given.  The  opinion  of  the 
writer  of  this  essay  will  of  course  mani- 
fest itself.  When  one  has  examined  a 
question  and  has  reached  a  positive  con- 
clusion, that  conclusion  will  affect  his 
judgment  of  the  points  of  evidence.  I  have 
examined  this  question  as  thoroughly 
as  lay  in  my  powxr,  and  have  reached 
a  conclusion;  so  that  while  the  whole 
matter  will  be  laid  before  the  reader,  I  do 
not  pretend  to  be  without  an  opinion 
which  becomes  a  firm  conviction  as  I  re- 
view the  whole  case  before  penning  this 
introduction. 

I  beg  the  reader  to  examine  the  matter 
for  himself,  to  consult  the  Scriptures,  Eu- 
sebius,  Josephus,  Herodotus,  the  Old  Tes- 
tament Apocrypha,  all  of  which  are  avail- 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

able  in  English  translations  in  any  public 
library.  I  ask  him  not  to  be  influenced  by 
vehement  assertions  whether  in  this  book 
or  in  any  other  discussion  of  the  case. 
Especially  I  warn  him  to  be  wary  of  pre- 
tentious claims  to  exclusive  knowledge. 
Scholarship  is  not  rare  in  these  days ;  good 
sense  and  sound  judgment  are  rarer. 


lO 


THE  QUESTION 

Porphyry,  a  heathen  philosopher  of  the 
third  century,  wrote  fifteen  books  against 
Christianity.  He  saw  that  the  new  faith 
was  winning  its  way  rapidly.  Thousands 
throughout  the  empire  had  become  fol- 
lowers of  Jesus  Christ.  Persecution  had 
not  stopped  the  progress  of  the  Gospel. 
Martyrs  calmly  met  their  fate  and  as 
many  more  were  ready  to  die.  Roman 
soldiers  were  sick  of  butchering  inoffen- 
sive and  unresisting  men  and  women, 
boys  and  girls ;  and  Roman  prefects  were 
murmuring  against  the  laws  which  re- 
quired them  to  put  to  death  the  most 
moral,  industrious,  peaceable  and  loyal 
people  under  their  charge.  The  ridicule 
of  the  wits  and  the  curses  of  the  heathen 
priests,  who  saw  their  temples  deserted, 
were  powerless  to  stay  the  rising  tide  of 
Christianity.  Perhaps  philosophy  could 
accomplish  what  the  sword  could  not  do. 


II 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

and  accordingly  Porphyry  brought  his 
intellectual  acumen  to  bear  against  the 
religion  of  the  Nazarene. 

The  best  known  of  Porphyry's  assaults 
is  his  attack  upon  the  authenticity  of  the 
Book  of  Daniel.  That  book  foretold  many 
important  events  in  the  political  world — 
events  which  had  already  come  to  pass. 
It  seemed  also  to  predict  the  coming  of 
the  Christ.  If  its  prophecies  of  matters 
in  secular  affairs  were  really  predictions, 
then  a  supernatural  warrant  for  the  Chris- 
tian religion  was  afforded.  These  pro- 
phecies, moreover,  intimated  the  ultimate 
overthrow  of  the  Roman  Empire,  an  is- 
sue which  every  patriotic  member  of  the 
empire  viewed  with  horror.  If  by  any 
means  it  could  be  shown  that  Daniel  pre- 
dicted nothing,  that  all  the  forecasts  con- 
cerning Babylon,  Persia^  the  Greek  domi- 
nation and  its  Syrian  successor,  were 
written  after  the  events,  then  forebodings 
about  the  permanence  of  the  empire 
would  be  soothed  and  one  stroke  at  least 
could  be  dealt  against  the  Galilean. 

12 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

To  this  object,  of  showing  a  late  date 
for  the  composition  of  the  Book  of  Daniel, 
Porphyry  devoted  himself.  His  argu- 
ments doubtless  had  effect.  At  all  events, 
the  sharpest  persecution  which  the  early 
church  had  to  endure  followed  hard  upon 
the  publication  of  Porphyry's  work.  But 
the  progress  of  the  Gospel  w^as  not  stayed. 
Ten  years  after  his  death  an  imperial  edict 
proclaimed  toleration  for  Christianity. 

The  modern  criticisms  upon  Daniel  do 
not  come  from  a  heathen  like  Porphyry, 
but  from  Christian  scholars.  They  are 
not  designed  to  antagonize  Christianity. 
They  may,  indeed,  like  Porphyry's,  ex- 
cite the  enemies  of  Christ  to  greater  bit- 
terness, and  weaken  faith  in  those  in 
whom  faith  is  feeble.  But  the  critics  de- 
sire neither  of  these  ends — their  purpose 
being  solely  a  search  for  truth.  If  they 
reproduce  the  arguments  of  Porphyry,  it  is 
because  they  perceive  merit  in  those  argu- 
ments, and  not  because  Porphyry's  pur- 
pose w^as  bad. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  self-assertion 

13 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

on  the  part  of  some  of  the  critics — a  way 
of  claiming  the  ''latest  results  of  criti- 
cism," of  posing  as  heroic  opponents  of 
the  ''fetters  of  traditionalism,"  and  so 
forth.  All  true  critics  regret  this,  and 
this  essay  will  treat  such  claims  as  im- 
pertinent and  untrue.  In  these  days  there 
is  no  heroism  involved  in  assailing  old 
opinions.  If  there  be  any  heroism  in  the 
case,  it  is  on  the  part  of  the  defenders  of 
traditional  views. 

Many  suppose  that  the  questions  in- 
volved are  exceedingly  recondite  and  can 
be  approached  only  by  learned  Oriental- 
ists, and  so  they  shrink  from  personal  in- 
vestigation ;  but  there  is  nothingmysterious 
in  the  question  of  the  date  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel.  Common  sense  and  honest  judg- 
ment provide  all  the  equipment  for  ex- 
amining the  case  from  top  to  bottom. 
Scholarship  will  but  verify  the  verdict 
which  good  sense  shall  render.  This  is 
not  to  decry  scholarship.  Much  ingenuity 
and  learning  have  been  expended  on  the 
book,  but  these  apply  rather  to  the  inter- 

14 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

pretation  of  the  visions  and  symbols. 
Upon  the  interpretation,  except  so  far  as 
the  interpretation  is  an  element  in  the  ar- 
gument, this  essay  will  not  enter. 

The  book,  according  to  its  own  state- 
ments, appears  to  have  been  written  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Persian  w^orld-empire, 
about  ^T,;^  B.  C,  by  Daniel,  who  w^as  car- 
ried captive  to  Babylon  in  his  youth  and 
who  attained  a  post  of  honor  and  respon- 
sibility under  the  great  King,  Nebuchad- 
nezzar. Daniel  saw  the  overthrow  of  the 
Babylonian  monarchy  and  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Persian  regime.  While  parts 
of  the  book  may  have  been  written  as  a 
journal  or  diary  during  the  Babylonian 
ascendancy,  it  was  finished  only  after  the 
Persians  had  been  in  control  some  years. 
One  hand  wrote  the  book.  Of  its  unity 
there  is  no  question  now,  for,  although  in 
pursuance  of  the  mania  for  ascribing  com- 
posite authorship  to  the  books  of  the  Old 
Testament,  some  have  tried  to  imagine  a 
number  of  authors,  all  such  attempts  are 
now  abandoned.     The  unity  of  the  book 

15 


DID  DAXIEL  AVRITE  DAXIEL  ? 

is  not  challenged.  It  is  not  an  aggrega- 
tion of  legends  or  m}'ths  slowly  taking 
form  in  the  passage  of  years.  It  is  the 
book  of  one  author. 

But  that  author,  it  is  said,  was  not  the 
Daniel  of  the  Court  of  Nebuchadnezzar. 
There  may  never  have  been  a  Daniel  at 
that  Court.  The  whole  book  is  a  work  of 
fiction  written  by  an  unknown  Jew  about 
the  year  163  B.  C.  It  was  written  to  en- 
courage the  Maccabees  in  their  heroic 
struggle  against  their  Syrian  oppressors. 
As  it  prophesies  the  death  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes,  the  chief  oppressor,  it  must 
have  been  written  after  his  death  or  so 
short  a  time  before  that  a  guess  thereat 
might  be  safely  ventured.  The  book  is 
written  as  if  a  prophecy,  but  its  predic- 
tions were  written  after  the  events,  and 
took  the  form  of  forecasts  merely  as  a 
matter  of  literar}-  presentment.  It  is  not 
denied  that  the  book  contains  predictions 
looking  to  the  far  future,  but  no  value  is 
to  be  attached  to  them  any  more  than  to 
the  prognostications  of  any  enthusiast. 

16 


DID  DAXIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

It  is  evident  that  between  the  book's 
own  claim  and  the  above-mentioned 
theon-  a  wide  divergence  exists.  The 
book  claims  to  be  a  truthful  record;  the 
theory  proclaims  it  a  fiction.  The  book 
narrates  historic  events  and  also  records 
certain  visions  vouchsafed  from  God  to 
his  faithful  servant ;  the  theory,  while  ad- 
mitting the  general  accuracy  of  the  his- 
tory, denies  that  there  were  any  visions 
from  God.  The  book  is  the  effort  of  a 
patriotic  Jew  to  fire  the  zeal  of  his  com- 
patriots, and  though  it  is  fiction,  it  is  in  a 
noble  cause,  and  according  to  ideas  then 
prevalent,  not  only  excusable  but  praise- 
worthy. It  is  not  denied  that  the  book 
has  been  received  by  Jews  and  Christians 
as  the  true  work  of  a  real  Daniel.  Never- 
theless, the  theory  says  that  the  book  itself 
contains  evidence  of  its  own  late  date: 
that  circumstances  corroborate  that  evi- 
dence, and  that  a  proper  view  of  pro- 
phecy compels  the  placing  of  prophecy — 
at  least  the  kind  of  prophecy  contained  in 
Daniel — after  the  events  prophesied. 

17 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

We  will  examine  first  the  inaccuracies 
of  the  book  and  then  the  objections  which 
may  be  called  more  subjective  in  char- 
acter— /.  e.,  whose  weight  is  affected  by 
the  views  men  hold  of  Divine  Revelation 
in  general. 


i8 


ALLEGED  INACCURACIES 

The  alleged  inaccuracies  and  peculiar- 
ities in  the  book  from  which  a  late  date  is 
inferred  are  as  follows : 

1.  Belshazzar  is  named  as  King  of 
Babylon  at  the  time  of  its  fall,  when  in 
fact  Nabonidus  was  King. 

2.  Nebuchadnezzar  is  called  the  father 
of  Belshazzar,  when  he  was  grandfather 
or,  possibly,  no  relation  at  all. 

3.  Nebuchadnezzar,  King  of  Babylon,  is 
said  to  have  come  against  Jerusalem  in 
the  third  year  of  Jehoiakim,  King  of  Ju- 
dah.  At  that  time  Nabopolassar,  the 
father  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  was  King  of 
Babylon. 

4.  This  attack  upon  Jerusalem  is  given 
as  in  the  third  year  of  Jehoiakim,  while 
Jeremiah  says  it  was  the  fourth. 

5.  The   writer    does    not    mention    the 

19 


DID  DANIEL  WHITE  DANIEL  ? 

names  of  the  Kings  who  succeeded  Ne- 
buchadnezzar. 

6.  The  book  is  written  in  Hebrew  and 
Aramaic,  about  half  in  each.  Aramaic 
was  extensively  used  by  the  Jews  of  later 
times;  which  raises  the  presumption  that 
it  was  composed  in  those  later  times. 

7.  There  are  some  Persian  words  in 
the  book. 

8.  Also  three  Greek  words,  which 
proves  that  the  book  was  written  after 
Alexander  conquered  the  Persian  empire, 
B.  C.  332. 

9.  The  author  speaks  of  angels,  thus 
showing  that  he  had  imbibed  the  religious 
ideas  of  the  Persians. 

10.  ''Darius  the  Mede"  is  spoken  of 
as  the  first  ruler  of  Babylon  under  Persian 
domination.  Darius  Hystaspis  was  not 
the  first  ruler  under  Persian  sway,  but  the 
third  or  fourth,  and  came  to  the  throne 
twenty  years  after  Babylon  was  taken. 
Moreover,  he  was  not  a  Alede  but  a  Per- 
sian. 

20 


DID  DAXIKL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

11.  The  wise  men  of  Babylon  are  called 
"Chaldeans" — a  name  not  applied  to  them 
until  later.  Also  they  spoke  in  Syriack 
(Aramaic),  which  probably  was  not 
spoken  at  Court;  and  if  it  was  spoken 
there,  it  was  a  dialect  different  from  that 
used  in  the  book. 

12.  The  Hebrew  of  the  book  favors  a 
date  long  after  the  exile,  and  the  Aramaic 
permits  a  late  date. 

13.  It  is  unreasonable  that  a  wise  King 
like  Nebuchadnezzar  should  have  been 
troubled  about  a  dream  which  he  had  for- 
gotten, or,  if  he  was  troubled,  that  he 
should  have  threatened  the  lives  of  the 
Chaldeans  for  not  recalling  the  dream  to 
his  memory. 

14.  The  author  of  the  book  Daniel  did 
not  know  how  to  spell  Nebuchadnezzar. 

15.  The  man  Daniel  of  the  book  was  too 
young  to  have  attained  the  high  position 
assigned  him. 

In  my  opinion  these  charges  are  with- 
out weight.     Some  of  them  are  obviously 

21 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

frivolous.  Whatever  value  once  attached 
to  a  few  of  them  vanished  long  ago.  But 
as  I  find  them  advanced  by  respectable 
scholars  in  recent  publications,*  and  ap- 
parently with  seriousness,  let  us  examine 
them  seriatim. 


I. 

Belshazzar,  King  of  Babylon,  is  not 
mentioned  by  any  ancient  secular  his- 
torian. Berosus^  who  lived  about  250 
years  after  the  Persian  conquest,  gives  the 
succession  as  follows : 

Nabuchodonosor,  the  Nebuchadnezzar 
of  Scripture. 

Evil-Marudack,  the  Evil-Merodach  of 
Scripture. 

Neriglissor. 


*Canon  Driver's  Introd.  to  O.  T. 

Hastings'  Diet,  of  Bible. 

Prof.  Curtis  in  a  series  of  articles  by  various 
authors  published  in  Philadelphia  Bulletin,  1902, 
and  others. 

22 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Laborosoarchad. 

Nabonned. 

Cyrus. 


Ptolemy  the  Greek  historian  gives : 

Nabokolassar. 

Illoariulamus. 

Nerikasolassar. 

Nabonadius. 

Cyrus. 

The  names  are  not  identical,  but  the 
length  of  the  reign  of  each  is  the  same  in 
both  lists,  so  that  no  doubt  exists  as  to 
the  persons.  Belshazzar  does  not  appear 
in  either  of  them.  For  many  years  this 
was  a  stumbling  block  in  the  way  of  com- 
mentators. Attempts  were  made  to  iden- 
tify Belshazzar  with  Nabonned,  but  be- 
sides the  difference  in  name — not  in  itself 
insurmountable,  for  every  king"  had  manv 
names — there  was  the  distinct  statement 
by  Berosus,  that  Nabonned  escaped  from 
Babylon,  capitulated  at  Borsippa,  and  was 
sent  thence  to  Carmania,  where  he  died. 

23 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

Daniel  says,  "In  the  same  night  was  Bel- 
shazzar  slain."  Passing  by  other  attempts 
at  reconciliation,  for  none  of  them  pre- 
sented any  more  probability  than  the  at- 
tempted identification  of  Belshazzar  with 
Nabonned,  the  matter  for  a  long  time  was 
reduced  to  the  question  wdiether  Daniel 
or  Berosus  was  the  more  accurate.  On 
one  side  was  the  probability  that  Berosus 
had  access  to  the  national  records.  Two 
and  a  half  centuries  had  intervened;  it  is 
true,  and  great  changes  had  occurred 
meanwhile  through  conquests  and  revolu- 
tions. On  the  other  hand,  Daniel  was  on 
the  spot  and  must  know  better  what  was 
happening  under  his  eyes  than  any  subse- 
quent historian,  however  diligent  and 
painstaking. 

But,  then,  suspicion  began  to  arise  that 
perhaps  Daniel  was  not  present.  Perhaps 
the  Book  of  Daniel  was  a  composition  of 
more  recent  date  than  Berosus.  How 
could  Berosus  be  mistaken?  And  why 
did  not  Herodotus,  Xenophon,  ]\Iegas- 
thenes  or  Abydenus,   any  one  of  whom 

24 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

might  have  mentioned  Belshazzar,  give 
some  hint  of  that  unfortunate  monarch? 
Those  to  whom  our  Lord's  recog-nition  of 
Daniel  is  an  all-sufficient  warrant  clung 
to  the  authenticity  of  the  narrative,  but 
they  were  sorry  the  truth  was  not  plainer. 
And  some  Christian  men  were  shaken. 
They  shrank  from  impugning  the  veracity 
of  the  Christ,  but  there  stood  the  fact — 
not  a  single  secular  historian  made  any 
mention  of  Belshazzar. 

And  so  the  case  stood  until  1854. 
Through  all  the  Christian  ages  up  to  that 
time  no  evidence  to  sustain  Daniel  had 
appeared.  No  wonder  that  other  lapses 
on  the  author's  part  were  looked  for.  And 
no  wonder  they  were  found. 

In  1854  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  deciph- 
ered certain  cylinders  containing  memo- 
rials of  Nabonned.  From  these  it  ap- 
peared that  Bil-shar-uzur  (Belshazzar) 
was  the  son  of  Nabonned  and  was  ad- 
mitted to  a  share  in  the  government. 
With  this  discovery  the  conflict  between 
Berosus  and  Daniel  disappears.     Nabon- 

25 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

necl  was  the  last  King  of  Babylon  and 
escaped  from  the  city  to  make  his  sub- 
mission afterward,  while  Belshazzar  re- 
mained in  Babylon,  the  ruler  there,  and 
perished  when  the  city  fell.  Incidentally, 
too,  the  explanation  of  Belshazzar's  prom- 
ise to  make  the  interpreter  of  the  mys- 
terious writing  on  the  wall  "third  ruler" 
in  the  kingdom  is  evident.  Belshazzar 
himself  was  the  second. 

Thus  the  inscriptions  have  vindicated 
Daniel  on  this  point.  We  may  wonder  at 
that  Providence  which  allowed  these  in- 
scriptions to  remain  hidden  for  two  thou- 
sand years,  the  absence  of  the  evidence 
they  contained  affording  opportunity  for 
error.  It  is  probable  that  the  assaults 
upon  the  genuineness  of  the  book  would 
never  have  begun  had  it  not  been  for  the 
mention  therein  of  Belshazzar's  name. 
Through  the  lack  of  that  evidence  which 
lay  concealed  in  the  ruins  of  Babylonia 
many  lost  confidence  in  the  Book  of  Dan- 
iel. \Miy  did  not  God  bring  that  evidence 
to  light  earlier?     Why  was  a  stumbling 

26 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

block  left  so  long  in  the  way  of  weak 
faith  ?  The  possibility  of  error,  either 
intellectual  or  moral,  is  never  taken  away 
from  us.  It  is  part  of  the  perilous  posi- 
tion in  wdiich  we,  as  free  intelligences,  al- 
ways stand.  No  one  was  compelled, 
through  the  silence  of  a  historian  w4io 
lived  two  and  a  half  centuries  after  the 
event,  to  doubt  the  prophet  who  was  en- 
dorsed by  our  Saviour.  We  are  sorry  for 
those  who  made  shipwreck  of  their  faith, 
and  passed  from  earth  before  Rawlinson's 
discovery  was  published,  but  they  were 
not  compelled.  They  made  their  choice. 
Believers  whose  faith  was  firmer  lamented 
the  obscurity,  but  they  trusted  God  wdio 
would  bring  hidden  things  to  light. 

But  what  if  Nabonned  had  never  made 
those  inscriptions  ?  Or  what  if  among  the 
thousands  of  inscriptions  which  have  been 
destroyed,  these  had  been  lost?  Or  what 
if  the  antiquarians  had  never  been  spurred 
to  the  difficult  and  costly  work  of  exca- 
vation? Some  of  us  who  are  not  over- 
confident of  our  own  stability  tremble  at 

27 


DID  DAXIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL  ? 

these  possibilities.  Perhaps  we  would  have 
lost  our  confidence  in  the  Bible!  But  the 
facts  would  have  been  just  the  same.  Bel- 
shazzar  was  King  in  Babylon  and  Daniel 
is  correct  in  this  matter  at  least. 


11. 

The  second  charge  against  the  book  of 
Daniel  is  that  in  it  Xebuchadnezzar  is 
called  the  father  of  Belshazzar  when,  as 
one  critic  puts  it,  "he  did  not  belong  to 
the  same  family." 

If  Xebuchadnezzar  was  Belshazzar's 
grandfather,  he  would  be  called  "father'' 
according  to  the  not  uncommon  Hebrew 
usage.  But  was  he  Belshazzar's  grand- 
father? He  was  not  X'abonned's  father. 
The  question  then  will  be,  w^as  Nebuchad- 
nezzar the  father  of  Belshazzar's  mother  ? 
Here  we  must  consult  probabilities.  We 
will  find,  I  think,  that  probabilities  point 
in  one  direction  only. 

Evil-^Ierodach.  son  of  X^'ebuchadnez- 
28 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL  ? 

zar,  succeeded  his  father  upon  the  throne, 
which  he  occupied  only  two  years,  being 
murdered  by  his  brother-in-law,  Nerig- 
lissar.  Berosus  says  that  Evil-Merodach 
was  ''lawless  and  intemperate."  The  only 
act  of  his  which  is  known  to  us  is  recorded 
in  2  Kings,  xxv,  27-30,  viz.,  his  kindness 
to  Jehoiakim,  the  captive  King  of  Judah. 
As  Berosus,  himself  a  priest,  obtained  his 
information  from  the  priestly  guild,  we 
may  suspect  the  strict  accuracy  of  his 
judgment  upon  the  murdered  monarch. 
Xeriglissar,  who  succeeded,  was  of  the 
priestly  party.  This  gave  him  favor  with 
that  powerful  faction.  He  was  not  legiti- 
mate heir  to  the  crown,  but  his  son  was. 
for  Neriglissar  had  married  a  daughter  of 
Nebuchadnezzar. 

After  a  reign  of  three  and  a  half  years 
Neriglissar  died  a  natural  death,  and  his 
son  Laborasoarchod,  a  child,  w^as  king. 

But  the  disorders  in  the  kingdom  de- 
manded a  hand  stronger  than  a  child's  at 
the  helm  of  state,  and  the  unfortunate  boy 
was  beaten   to   death,   having  borne  the 

29 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

royal  title  for  nine  months.  Nabonned 
seized  the  kingdom.  What  title  had  he? 
It  was  a  perilous  dignity  to  which  he  suc- 
ceeded. He  was  not  of  roval  blood  bv 
birth,  but  his  claim  appears  to  have  been 
recognized,  for  he  reigned  seventeen  years 
and  until  the  Babylonian  dynasty  was 
overthrown  by  the  conquering  Cyrus. 
The  inference  is  almost  unavoidable;  his 
son  Belshazzar  was  the  legitimate  heir. 
Nabonned,  too,  had  married  a  daughter 
of  the  illustrious  Nebuchadnezzar,  some 
say  the  widow  of  Neriglissar,  and  some 
another  daughter  of  the  great  King.  Upon 
Belshazzar  the  hopes  of  the  nation  rested 
and  the  great  mourning  for  the  king's  son 
mentioned  in  the  annalistic  tablet  of  Cyrus 
is  explained.  ''Gobryas  made  an  assault," 
says  that  tablet,  ''and  the  King's  son  was 
slain — there  was  lamentation  in  the  coun- 
try of  Accad — and  Cambyses,  son  of 
Cyrus,  conducted  the  obsequies."  If  Bel- 
shazzar was  grandson  of  the  illustrious 
Nebuchadnezzar,  these  things,  Nabonned's 
undisputed  reign,  the  popular  affection  for 

30 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  young  prince,  and  the  ostentatious 
honors  paid  by  the  poHtic  conqueror,  are 
accounted  for.  Otherwise  they  are  not 
accounted  for. 

The  queen  mother  spoke  truth  (Dan. 
V,  ii)  and  the  prophecy  of  Jeremiah 
xxvii,  7,  *'A11  nations  shall  serve  Nebu- 
chadnezzar and  his  son,  and  his  son's 
son,"  was  fulfilled. 

Additional  probability  is  lent  to  this 
conclusion  by  the  fact  that  Nabonned's 
second  son  was  called  Nebuchadnezzar 
and  when  certain  revolts  occurred  under 
Darius  Hystaspis,  twenty  years  later,  the 
insurgents  invoked  the  name  of  that 
younger  son,  thus  showing  that  the  first- 
born was  dead  and  had  died  in  so  well 
known  a  manner  that  his  name  could  not 
be  used  as  a  rallying  cry. 

Herodotus*  speaks  of  a  queen  Nitocris. 
He  is  confused  as  to  her  relationship,  but 
he  dwells  much  upon  her  eminence,  the 
great  works,  forts,  canals,  etc.,  which  she 


*Herod.,  I,  185-188. 

31 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

built.  The  excavations  show  that  many 
of  these  works  attributed  by  the  historian 
to  her,  bear  the  name  of  Nabonned.  ^^^hat 
is  the  inference?  Is  it  not  that  she  was 
the  wife  of  Nabonned  and  that  he  derived 
dignity  and  security  from  alHance  with 
the  daughter  of  the  great  King?  The  very 
confusion  of  Herodotus  strengthens  the 
probabihty  here  advanced,  for  he  seems 
to  say  that  Nitocris  was  the  wife  of  Ne- 
buchadnezzar and  the  mother  of  Nabon- 
ned. If  this  were  so,  then  Belshazzar  was 
grandson  of  Nebuchadnezzar  through 
Nabonned.  This,  however,  disagrees 
with  all  other  testimony,  but  it  is  easy  to 
imagine  that  Herodotus,  knowing  that 
Nabonned's  sons  were  grandsons  of  Ne- 
buchadnezzar, counted  their  descent 
through  their  father  instead  of  their 
mother.  Look  at  it  how  we  will,  the  en- 
tire evidence — leaving  out  the  testimony 
of  Scripture  altogether — establishes  a 
probability,  amounting  to  a  moral  cer- 
tainty, that  Belshazzar  was  grandson  to 
Nebuchadnezzar. 

32 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

III. 

Dan.  i,  i,  states  that  in  the  third  year 
of  Jehoiakim  King  of  Judah,  Nebuchad- 
nezzar, King  of  Babylon,  came  unto  Jeru- 
salem and  besieged  it.  It  is  objected  that 
Nebuchadnezzar  did  not  become  king— at 
least  full  king — till  the  following  year. 

What  if  he  did  not?  Daniel  wrote 
while  Nebuchadnezzar  was  king  and  em- 
ploys his  present  title,  just  as  we  would 
say,  President  Roosevelt  was  at  the  Battle 
of  San  Juan,  though  he  was  not  President 
then. 

But  it  appears  from  Berosus*  that  Ne- 
buchadnezzar was  King  in  association 
with  his  father  in  the  third  year  of  Je- 
hoiakim. This  plan  of  associating  the 
heir  with  his  father  in  the  Kingship — a 
not  uncommon  occurrence  among  Ori- 
ental monarchies,  as  e.g.,  Nabonned  and 
Belshazzar,  Assurbanipal  and  Essarhad- 
don,  Amenhotep  I  and  Amenhotep  II,  Seti 
and   Ramses   II,    sfave   rise   to   a   double 


*Josephus    Ant.,    X,    ii. 
33 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

method  of  computing  the  years  of  a 
King's  reign ;  some  reckoned  from  the 
date  of  association ;  some  from  the  death 
of  the  father  only. 


IV. 


A  discrepancy  is  said  to  exist  between 
Daniel  and  Jeremiah ;  Daniel  giving  the 
third  year  of  Jehoiakim  and  Jeremiah  the 
fourth  for  the  attack  upon  Jerusalem. 
Dan.  i,  i,  comp.  Jer.  xxv,  i,  xxxvi,  i, 
xlvi,  2. 

If  there  be  a  discrepancy  here,  it  can 
hardly  be  counted  an  argument  for  the 
Maccabean  origin  for  the  Book  of  Daniel. 
A  writer  in  Judea  in  the  time  of  the  Mac- 
cabees, with  the  Book  of  Jeremiah  before 
him,  would  not^  in  the  first  sentence  of  his 
romance,  diverge  from  such  an  authority 
as  Jeremiah.  A  discrepancy  with  Jere- 
miah w^ould  show  that  the  writer  of  Dan- 
iel was  not  familiar  with  Jeremiah.     This 

34 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

is  incredible,  for  the  author  of  Daniel 
refers  to  Jeremiah.     Dan.  ix,  2. 

But  there  is  no  need  to  suggest  dis- 
crepancy. In  the  Babylonian  calendar  the 
year  began  in  the  spring.  In  Judah  the 
year  began  in  the  autumn.  The  Baby- 
lonian third  year  would  overlap  the  Ju- 
dean  fourth  year  by  about  six  months. 
The  same  date  could  be  both  the  third  and 
fourth  year,  according  to  the  mode  of 
reckoning  (see  Chronology  in  Smith's 
Dictionary  of  the  Bible). 

The  notion  of  a  discrepancy  probably 
arises  from  the  mention,  Jer.  xlvi,  2,  that 
the  battle  of  Carchemish  occurred  in  the 
fourth  year  of  Jehoiakim  and  the  assump- 
tion that  Nebuchadnezzar  could  not  have 
appeared  before  Jerusalem  prior  to  that 
battle.  This  assumption  is  not  inevitable. 
Necho,  King  of  Egypt,  moved  against  the 
Chaldeans  in  610  or  608  B.  C,  probably 
in  the  latter  year.  The  battle  of  Carchem- 
ish, which  is  on  the  Euphrates,  did  not 
occur  till  three  years  later,  i.e.,  605  B.  C. 
What  happened  during  the  interval? 

33 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Josiah  opposed  the  Egyptian  advance 
in  608  B.  C.  and  was  defeated  and  slain 
at  Megiddo.  The  people  of  Jerusalem  im- 
mediately chose  Jehoahaz  as  King.  Three 
months  afterward  Necho  deposed  Jehoa- 
haz, placed  Jehoiakim,  the  elder  brother, 
on  the  throne,  and  carried  the  deposed 
monarch  as  prisoner  to  Egypt.  It  would 
seem,  therefore,  that,  though  victorious 
at  ]\Iegiddo,  his  army  was  so  crippled  that 
he  had  to  return  home  to  refit.  It  is  diffi- 
cult otherwise  to  account  for  the  three 
years'  inaction  in  the  face  of  so  energetic 
an  opponent  as  Nebuchadnezzar.  That  a 
detachment  of  Necho's  army  should  have 
been  left  undisturbed  for  three  years  in 
Carchemish  is  unlikely. 

W^e  have  then  Jehoiakim  for  three  years 
upon  the  throne  of  Judah  ruling  a  dis- 
tracted city.  He  was  King  through  favor 
of  Necho,  but  a  party  in  the  city,  in  which 
party  was  Jeremiah,  favored  the  Baby- 
lonian alliance.  We  read,  Jer.  xxvii,  1-6, 
that  "in  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Je- 
hoiakim" the  prophet  warned  the   King 

36 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

that  "all  these  lands  have  been  given  into 
the  hands  of  Nebuchadnezzar."  Is  it  not 
possible  that  the  King  vacillated?  And, 
whether  he  did  or  not,  would  it  not  have 
been  wise  policy  on  Nebuchadnezzar's 
part,  by  force,  if  necessary,  by  persuasion, 
if  possible,  to  secure  Judea  for  his  side  in 
the  coming  conflict?  There  was  nothing 
to  prevent  Nebuchadnezzar  appearing 
with  a  force  before  Jerusalem,  taking 
young  nobles  like  Daniel  and  his  com- 
panions as  hostages  or  as  guests,  as  Je- 
hoiakim's  behavior  should  determine. 
This  could  have  happened  before  Carche- 
mish.  Then  when  in  605  B.  C.  the  Egypt- 
ian troops  on  their  way  to  Carchemish 
appeared  in  Judea,  Jehoiakim's  revolt  in 
their  favor  follows  naturally. 

Dan.  i,  i,  2,  does  not  describe  a  single 
event.  It  is  a  summary  of  the  deporta- 
tions. The  two  principal  deportations 
were  that  mentioned  in  II  Kings,  xxiv, 
when  Jehoiakim  was  carried  to  Babylon, 
and  that  mentioned  in  II  Kings  xxv,  when 
the  temple  was  destroyed.     The  deporta- 

37 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

tion  of  the  young  nobles,  among  whom 
was  Daniel,  occurred  previously  during 
Jehoiakim's  reign  while  the  Jewish  mon- 
arch was  wavering  in  his  allegiance.  It 
was  a  politic  measure  on  Nebuchadnez- 
zar's part.  The  favor  granted  to  the 
voung  men  shows  this.  Nebuchadnezzar 
had  no  wish  to  make  enemies  of  the  Jews. 
They  were  useful  to  him  as  a  buffer  state 
against  Eg}'pt.  At  the  same  time  these 
princes  were  virtual  hostages;  that  they 
became  captives  along  with  the  rest  of 
their  nation  was  due  to  the  folly  of  Je- 
hoiakim  against  the  advice  of  Jeremiah. 

There  is,  of  course,  an  element  of  con- 
jecture in  this  attempted  reconstruction  of 
the  history,  but  so  there  is  in  all  attempts 
where  the  data  are  so  incomplete. 


V. 

The  fifth  charge  against  the  Book  of 
Daniel  is  that  it  does  not  give  a  list  of 
Babylonian  Kings. 

38 


DID  DANIEL  WHITE  DANIEL  ? 

But  why  should  it  ?  The  book  is  not  a 
history  of  Babylon,  but  a  narrative  of  Dan- 
iel's experiences.  He,  evidently,  was  re- 
leased from  public  service  upon  the  death 
of  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  in  his  old  age 
was  recalled  to  pronounce  the  doom  of 
Belshazzar.  So  far  from  this  omission 
of  a  list  of  Kings  between  Nebuchadnez- 
zar and  Belshazzar  proving  the  book  a  fic- 
tion, its  evidence,  it  seems  to  me,  is  di- 
rectly the  other  way.  A  romancer,  to 
give  an  air  of  reality  to  his  work,  would 
probably  introduce  such  a  list ;  but  as 
Daniel  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  inter- 
mediate Kings,  he  very  properly  omits 
what  has  no  connection  with  his  story.  I 
am  at  a  loss  to  understand  why  this  fact  is 
considered  an  argument  against  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  book. 


VI. 

The  book  is  written  partly  in  Chaldee, 
partly  in  Hebrew — an  arrangement  never 

39 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

so  likely  as  in  the  case  of  one  familiar 
with  both  languages.  The  same  thing  is 
seen  in  Ezra  iv,  8 — vi,  i8  and  vii,  12-26. 
Ezra,  too,  had  lived  in  Babylon.  One 
comes  upon  a  similar  phenomenon — if  so 
important  a  word  may  be  used  for  a  very 
ordinary  occurrence — in  shops  kept  by 
Germans  in  any  of  our  cities.  Conversa- 
tion branches  into  English  and  back  to 
German  without  apparent  effort. 

The  popular  language  of  Babylon  was 
Aramaic.  There  was  an  older  tongue,  the 
Babylonian,  used  for  inscriptions  and 
learned  treatises^  but  that  was  in  decline, 
and,  as  appears  from  business  tablets 
dated  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  I  and 
Darius  II,  464-405  B.  C.,  it  had  then 
ceased  to  be  the  language  of  the  plain  peo- 
ple; only  scholars  employed  it.* 

Here  we  come  upon  one  of  those  cri- 
teria which  are  valuable  in  determining 
the  date  of  a  writing,  viz.,  the  incidental, 
casual  unimportant  expressions.   We  read, 

*Prof.    Clay    and    Dr.    Ranke    in    Rec.    of  Past, 
December,  1904. 

40 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Dan.  ii,  4,  that  the  Chaldeans  spoke  to  the 
King  in  Syriack  (Aramaic).  Evidently 
this  was  something  unusual.  There  was 
no  time  for  the  composition  of  a  reply  in 
the  stately  old  tongue.  The  King  was 
impatient ;  in  no  mood  to  be  trifled  with. 
The  Chaldeans  were  alarmed.  Their  lives 
were  in  peril.  The  readiest  speech  comes 
first  to  their  lips.  The  naturalness  and 
simplicity  of  truth  are  here. 


VII. 

There  are  Persian  words  in  Daniel. 

Naturally.  It  would  be  remarkable  if 
there  were  not,  seeing  that  there  was  in- 
tercourse betw^een  Persia  and  Babylon, 
and  seeing  also  that  Daniel  himself  held 
high  station  in  the  Persian  Court. 


VITI. 

But  there  are  also  Greek  words,  and 
this   is   taken   to   indicate   a   composition 

41 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DAXIEL  ? 

long  after  the  Greek  conquest  under  Alex- 
ander, which  took  place  in  332  B.  C.  Fol- 
lowing that  conquest,  Greek  influence 
dominated  in  Palestine.  Seleucus,  one  of 
Alexander's  generals,  obtained  Syria  in 
his  share  of  the  empire.  Under  the  Se- 
leucidae  constant  efforts  were  made  to 
Hellenize  the  Jews.  Greek  laws,  Greek 
language,  Greek  games  and  Greek  relig- 
ion were  crowded  upon  the  Jews,  many  of 
whom  yielded  wholly  to  Hellenic  influ- 
ence. At  that  time  Greek  expressions 
were  likely  to  creep  into  any  writing,  so 
that  the  Greek  words  in  Daniel  are,  by  the 
critics,  thought  to  indicate  a  late  date. 
Canon  Driver  rests  his  conclusions  on  the 
Greek  words.  "The  Persian  words,"  he 
says,  "presuppose  a  period  after  the  Per- 
sian empire  had  been  well  established. 
The  Greek  words  demand,  the  Hebrew 
supports  and  the  Aramaic  permits  a  date 
after  the  conquest  of  Palestine  by  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  B.  C.  332."  "Alore  than 
this,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "can  scarcely 
in   the   present   state   of   our   knowledge 

42 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

be  affirmed  categorically.  Nevertheless 
grounds  exist,  which,  though  not  ade- 
quate to  demonstrate,  yet  make  the  opin- 
ion a  probable  one,  that  the  book,  as  we 
have  it,  is  a  work  of  the  age  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes." 

Let  us  examine  these  Greek  words 
which  ''demand"  a  late  date  for  the  book. 
Let  it  be  remembered  that  Greek  was 
spoken  by  all  scholarly  men  in  Palestine  in 
the  time  of  Antiochus  and  by  many  who 
were  not  scholars.  The  Old  Testament 
had  been  translated  into  Greek — parts  of 
it  more  than  a  hundred  years  before — 
Jews  changed  their  Hebrew  names  into 
Greek.  Commerce  was  conducted  in 
Greek.  Litercourse  with  government  was 
in  Greek.  For  many  articles  in  use  there 
was  no  Hebrew  or  Aramaic  word.  Ev- 
erything else  written  at  that  time  by  Jew- 
ish writers  which  has  come  down  to  us 
was  either  in  Greek  or  so  marked  by 
Greek  expressions  and  ideas  as  to  render 
the  determination  of  the  original  language 
difficult.     Esdras  was  in  Greek  only,  Ju- 

43 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

dith,  composed  in  Maccabean  times,  was 
probably  in  Chaldee,  but  it  is  so  Greek 
that  scholars  are  uncertain  what  the  orie- 
inal  was.  Baruch,  330-160  B.  C,  some 
scholars  think  was  composed  in  Hebrew, 
some  that  Greek  was  the  original;  while 
others  think  a  part  was  Hebrew  and  a  part 
Greek. 

If  Daniel  were  written  in  the  time  of 
Antiochus  it  would  have  many  Greek  ex- 
pressions and  ideas.  It  has  no  Greek  Ideas 
and  of  Greek  words  it  has  two,  possibly 
three !  And  these  three  are  the  names  of 
musical  instruments !  Dan.  iii,  5.  So 
then  this  vigorous  assertion  about  "the 
Greek  demanding"  rests  only  on  the  fact 
that  a  man  writing  in  Babylon  uses  three 
foreign  names  of  musical  instruments ! 
How  many  foreign  names  of  musical  in- 
struments does  our  language  employ? 
And  every  other  language?  A  foreign 
instrument  introduced  into  Babylon 
would  carry  its  foreign  name,  just  as 
instruments  would  and  do  in  London  or 
New  York. 

44 


DID  DANIEI.  WRITE  DANIEL? 

But  could  foreign  musical  instruments 
have  been  introduced  into  Babylon  ?  Cer- 
tainly. And  of  all  foreign  things  they  are 
most  likely  to  have  retained  their  names. 
Babylon  was  the  centre  of  vast  commerce. 
Its  boundaries  touched  Ionia  on  the  west 
and  at  times  included  Ionia.  Babylonians 
fought  with  the  Greek  soldiers  whom  the 
Egy^ptians  employed.  If  Greek  musicians 
did  not  go  voluntarily  to  so  inviting  a 
metropolis  as  Babylon,  they  would  surely 
be  brought  thither  by  victorious  generals 
returning  from  war.  Would  not  Neb- 
uchadnezzar— whose  chief  glory  was, 
not  his  conquests,  for  he  says  but  little 
about  them  in  his  inscriptions,  but  his 
splendid  city — have  gathered  every  in- 
strument he  could  find  into  his  military 
band?  It  would  not  be  surprising  if 
among  that  assemblage  of  "all  kinds  of 
musick"  there  were  instruments  from 
Egypt  or  Etruria  or  the  western  limits  of 
the  Mediterranean  Sea,  brought  in  by 
Tyrian  trade. 

And  this,  in  the  opinion  of  the  eminent 

45 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

English  critic,  is  the  one  prime  proof  of 
the  late  composition  of  the  Book  Daniel. 
And,  strange  to  say,  we  find  Driver's  dic- 
tum repeated,  with  and  without  quotation 
marks,  as  decisive. 

IX. 

The  "angelology"  show^s,  it  is  said,  a 
Persian  influence  upon  the  mind  of  the 
writer  of  Daniel.  The  angelology  of 
Daniel  is  different,  the  critics  admit,  from 
the  angelology  of  Tobit  and  the  Book  of 
Enoch ;  but  still  approximates  the  notions 
of  those  later  books. 

Suppose  it  is  so.  Whence  did  the 
writers  of  Tobit  and  Enoch  get  the  doc- 
trine which  they  elaborated  into  their  no- 
tions? An  ancient  and  venerated  book 
would  be  a  probable  source.  Such  a  book 
would  be  Daniel,  wdiich  must  in  that  case 
have  existed  before  Tobit  and  Enoch  were 
written. 

"But  Daniel  might  have  obtained  his 
ideas  from  the  Persians."  So?     Well,  he 

46 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DAXIEL? 

lived  among  them ;  held  high  office  among 
them;  read  their  books,  and  if  there  were 
anything  true  in  those  books,  why  should 
he  not  accept  it?  And  if  he  did  accept 
such  truths,  why  should  he  wait  370  years 
before  mentioning  the  matter  ? 

The  Persian  religion  must  have  been 
known  to  the  guild  of  learned  men  in 
Babylon,  of  which  guild  Daniel  was  a 
member.  If  Daniel  knew  that  religion, 
and  if  it  was  like  the  Zoroastrianism, 
traces  of  which  have  come  down  to  us,  he 
knew  something  better  than  the  Babylon- 
ian idolatry  which  he  saw  around  him.  If 
a  prophet  of  the  Lord  must  get  his  relig- 
ious knowledge  from  heathenism,  then 
Daniel  in  Babylon  was  in  the  best  position 
to  get  that  knowledge  amid  the  serious 
discourses  of  his  learned  colleagues,  and 
he  merits  much  credit  for  his  wise  choice 
of  the  best  that  heathenism  had  to  give. 

But  how  nonsensical  is  this  theorizins: 
about  heathen  origins  for  the  truths  of  the 
Bible!  If  God  could  reveal  truth  to  hea- 
then sages,  why  not  to  Hebrew  saints? 

47 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Why  must  we  assume  that  the  whole- 
some food  in  the  Scriptures  must  have 
been  picked  from  the  garbage  barrels  of 
heathenism  ?  Are  divine  impressions  shut 
out  from  good  and  holy  men,  and  vouch- 
safed only  to  idolators?  Daniel's  doctrine 
of  angels  is  warranted  by  Christ.  A  bet- 
ter source  than  Persian  fancies  can  be 
looked  for.  Could  he  not  be  a  recipient  of 
Divine  revelation  ?  W^as  there  an  advance 
in  Scriptural  truths  upon  the  prophets  pre- 
ceding him  ?  That  is  what  we  look  for  in 
the  whole  history  of  God's  dealings  with 
men,  and  it  is  what  we  find.  "God,  who 
at  sundry  times  and  in  diverse  manners 
spake  in  times  past  unto  the  fathers  by 
the  prophets,  hath  in  these  last  days 
spoken  unto  us  by  His  Son." 

Daniel  stands  in  precisely  that  place  in 
history  in  which  a  wider  view  of  God's 
purposes  for  mankind  and  of  his  control 
of  the  movements  of  the  powers  of  this 
world  could  best  be  given.  The  Hebrew 
people,  disciplined  by  their  captivity,  w^ere 
destined  to  a  spiritual  influence  upon  the 

48 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DxVNIEL  ? 

world,  more  profound  than  was  exerted 
or  could  have  been  exerted  in  their  con- 
stricted position  as  a  nation  among  na- 
tions. Visions  of  a  return  of  temporal 
power,  of  wealth  and  wordly  prosperity 
filled  their  minds.  Their  subsequent  his- 
tory, hampered  and  persecuted  as  they 
were,  was  not  calculated  to  produce  the 
majestic  sweep  of  the  Book  of  Daniel.  It 
was  in  great  Babylon  that  a  revelation  of 
their  Lord  as  the  God  of  the  whole  earth, 
with  purposes  grander  and  more  far- 
reaching  than  the  setting  up  of  a  human 
dynasty,  was  fitting.  In  Daniel  and  Eze- 
kiel  prophetic  vision  reaches  be3^ond  a  sin- 
gle race,  and,  though  the  Lord's  kingdom 
is  a  kingdom  of  chosen  ones,  it  is  a  king- 
dom greater  than  a  Semitic  tribe.  To 
place  the  Book  of  Daniel — even  if  there 
were  no  proof  of  its  date — along  with 
Tobit,  Bel  and  the  Dragon  and  other  por- 
ductions  of  that  age,  is  like  placing  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John  among  the  Apocryphal 
Gospels. 

But  let  us  scrutinize  this  "angelology." 

49 


DID  DANIEL  V/RITE  DANIEL? 

It  is  insinuated  that  contact  with  Persian 
magianism  is  necessary  to  account  for 
Daniel's  angelology.  If  this  were  so,  we 
have  the  contact  in  Daniel's  own  time  in 
Babylon  itself  under  the  Persian  domina- 
tion. We  certainly  ought  not  to  look  for 
its  origin  among  the  Maccabees  with  their 
fierce  antagonism  to  heathenism.  Whence 
did  Zechariah  get  the  angelology  of  which 
his  book  is  full?  He  was  among  the 
first  exiles  wdio  returned  to  Jerusalem. 
Whence,  also,  came  the  angelology  of 
Ezekiel,  the  contemporary  of  Daniel? 
Neither  of  these  writers  can  be  assigned  a 
date  300  years  after  their  death.  If  their 
angelology  must  come  from  the  Persians, 
then  it  came  in  the  same  way  and  at  the 
same  time  as  Daniel's. 

But  why  must  it  come  from  the  Per- 
sians at  all  ?  The  Assyrian  and  Accadian 
mythologies  recognize  a  hierarchy  of 
good  spirits  and  another  of  bad  spirits. 
"The  Babylonian  was  taught  to  consider 
himself  surrounded  and  affected  by  spirit- 
ual beings  from  the  hour  of  his  birth  to 

50 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

that  of  his  death."  But  why  again  should 
we  resort  to  an  awkward  and  senseless 
hypothesis  of  plagiarism  from  any  hea- 
thenism? The  Hebrew  books  from  the 
earliest  times  are  familiar  with  the 
thought  of  angels.  Jacob  meets  ''God's 
host"  at  Mahanaim,  Gen.  xxxii,  1-2.  He 
wrestled  with  an  angel  at  Peniel,  Gen. 
xxxii,  24.  Abraham  entertains  angels  at 
Mamre.  Gideon  and  Manoah  talk  with 
angels,  Jud.  vi,  21,  xiii,  16.  David,  H 
Sam.  xxiv,  16;  Elijah,  I  Kings,  xix,  5, 
and  others  communed  with  angels. 

''But  these  were  appearances  to  indi- 
viduals— Daniel  speaks  of  angels  as  cham- 
pions or  protectors  of  nations."  Yes,  but 
we  read,  H  Kings,  xix,  35,  of  the  over- 
throw of  Sennacherib's  host  by  an  angel; 
of  the  mountain  full  of  spirit  horsemen 
whom  Elisha's  servant  saw;  of  the  man 
with  the  drawn  sword,  Josh,  v,  14,  who 
declared  himself  the  Captain  of  the  host 
of  the  Lord;  and  in  Is.  xxiv,  21,  of  the 
host  of  high  ones  whom  the  Lord  will 
punish. 

51 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

There  is  nothing  in  the  gradations  of 
angehc  spirits  as  mentioned  by  Daniel 
which  is  not  substantially  contained  else- 
where in  the  Old  Testament.  Isaiah  saw 
the  Seraphim  (vi,  2).  Cherubim  were 
placed  at  the  gate  of  Eden  (Gen.  iii,  24). 
Micaiah  saw  the  Lord  sitting  on  his 
throne  and  all  the  host  of  heaven  standing 
by  him  on  his  right  hand  and  on  his  left. 
I  Kings,  xxii,  19-22. 

"But  Daniel  is  the  first  to  use  the  names 
of  Gabriel  and  Michael."  True;  and  Isa- 
iah is  the  first  to  name  the  Seraphim ; 
must  we  infer  that  Isaiah  a  hundred  years 
before  the  captivity  learned  his  angelology 
from  the  Persians? 


X. 


Darius  the  Mede  is  mentioned  in  Daniel 
(v,  31)  as  the  immediate  successor  of 
Belshazzar  in  Babylon.  And  vi,  28 — 
''Daniel  prospered  in  the  reign  of  Darius 
and  in  the  reign  of  Cyrus  the  Persian" 

52 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

seems  to  fix  the  reign  of  Darius  before 
that  of  Cyrus.  But,  according  to  secular 
historians,  the  first  Darius  under  the  Per- 
sian regime  was  Darius  Hystaspis,  and  he 
came  to  the  throne  twenty  years  after  the 
capture  of  Babylon  and  after  the  death  of 
Cyrus  and  of  Cambyses  the  son  of  Cyrus. 
It  is  assumed  therefore  that  the  writer  of 
the  book,  ignorant  of  the  facts,  misplaced 
Darius. 

In  reply  to  this,  the  Book  of  Daniel 
makes  no  mention  whatever  of  Darius 
Hystaspis  the  Persian.  Darius  the  Mede 
is  the  King  spoken  of.  ''But  Darius  the 
Mede  is  not  in  the  royal  lists  of  Berosus." 
Neither  was  Belshazzar,  and  Belshazzar 
existed  notwithstanding.  Seeing  how 
worthless  the  argument  drawn  from  the 
omission  of  Belshazzar's  name  has  turned 
out  to  be,  caution  in  advancing  a  similar 
argument  is  advisable. 

Who  was  this  Darius  the  Mede?  He 
was  an  old  man  when  he  began  to  reign, 
and  onlv  one  vear  of  his  reisfn  is  men- 
tioned.      He  was   "made   King  over  the 

53 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Chaldeans."  What  are  the  circumstances? 
The  alhed  forces  of  the  Medes  and  Per- 
sians had  been  pursuing  a  course  of  con- 
quest. Lydia  and  other  kingdoms  of  Asia 
Minor  had  fallen.  Babylon  and  the  an- 
cient dominions  of  Assyria  were  next  to 
yield,  and  then  the  conquest  of  the  world 
seems  to  have  been  the  ambition  of  Cyrus 
the  commander  of  the  allied  armies.  But 
Cyrus  was  no  mere  butcher  of  men.  He 
was  a  wise  statesman  as  well  as  a  skillful 
general.  Jealousy  among  allied  armies  is 
always  possible.  Unless  checked,  it  in- 
volves disunion  and  defeat.  When  we 
come  upon  the  allied  names  it  is  the 
''Medes  and  Persians" — the  Aledes  being 
the  older  and  more  powerful.  Cyrus  was 
a  Persian.  What  more  probable  than  that 
he  would  place  a  Mede  in  control  of  the 
important  conquest.  Babylonia?  He  had 
other  conquests  to  make,  and  he  made 
them.  If  he  placed  a  Mede  at  the  head 
in  Babylon,  he  acted  with  the  wisdom  of  a 
statesman.  If  he  did  not,  he  ran  a  serious 
risk.    The  Medes  were  sinking  from  their 

54 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

place  of  prominence,  and,  as  we  know, 
the  whole  empire  ceased  after  a  while  to 
bear  the  double  title,  and  was  known  as 
Persian  alone.  A  proper  and  most  politic 
act  was  this  of  making  a  Mede  the  King. 
It  helps  us  understand  the  success  and  the 
great  popularity  of  Cyrus.  It  need  not 
surprise  us  that  Darius  the  Mede  escapes 
mention  by  the  secular  historians.  His 
reign  was  brief.  Whatever  compliment 
to  the  Median  people  was  designed  in  his 
elevation  to  the  Kingship,  the  real  power 
was  Cyrus,  and  the  Mede  was  overshad- 
owed by  the  towering  figure  who  ever 
after  was  the  national  hero  of  Persia.  In 
the  A.  V.  Daniel  v,  31,  Darius  is  said 
to  have  taken  the  kingdom.  The  word 
translated  "taken"  means  received  as  a 
subordinate.  The  same  word  occurs  Dan. 
ii,  6,  ''Ye  shall  receive  of  me  gifts  and 
rewards,"  and  Dan.  vii,  18,  "The  saints 
of  the  Most  High  shall  take  the  king- 
dom," i.e.,  not  by  their  own  power,  but 
through  gift  from  God. 

But  Darius  the  Mede  is  not  so  invisible 

55 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

among  ancient  writers  as  the  critics  would 
have  us  suppose.  Xenophon  says  that  a 
Mede  succeeded  to  the  throne  of  Babylon. 
He  gives  him  the  name  of  Cyaxares. 
Xenophon's  account  is  romantic  and  the 
name  he  gives  cannot  be  reconciled  with 
other  statements.  Still,  he  apparently 
sees  no  improbability  in  a  Mede  occupy- 
ing the  throne.  Abydenus  puts  in  the 
mouth  of  Nebuchadnezzar  an  oracular 
declaration — "O  Babylonians,  I,  N^ebu- 
chadnezzar  announce  to  you  a  future  ca- 
lamity. There  shall  come  a  Persian  mule, 
using  our  divinities  as  allies.  He  shall 
bring  us  into  bondage ;  leagued  v;ith  him 
shall  be  the  Mede,  the  boast  of  Assyria." 
Aeschylus  in  his  Persae  mentions  a  ]\Iede 
as  the  first  leader,  followed  by  Cyrus. 
While  these  are  but  faint  traces,  there 
occurs  in  the  scholiast  upon  Aristophanes 
this  statement,  "The  Daric  (/.  c.  the  coin) 
is  not  named  from  Darius  (Hystaspis) 
the  father  of  Xerxes,  but  from  another 
preceding  King."  This  preceding  King 
must  be  Darius  the  Mede. 

56 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

If  Darius  the  Mede  had  held  a  more 
independent  position,  or  if  his  reign  had 
lasted  longer,  we  might  expect  to  find 
him  among  the  inscriptions  now  awaiting 
decipherment  but,  unless  incidentally,  we 
can  hardly  look  for  such  mention  of  him. 
Sir  Robert  Anderson,  however,  in  his 
Daniel  in  the  Critic s  Den,  identifies  him 
with  Gobryas  who  is  spoken  of  in  the  an- 
nalistic  Tablet  of  Cyrus. 


XI. 


It  is  said  that  '^Chaldeans"  was  the 
name  of  a  people,  but  that  the  Book  of 
Daniel  applies  it  to  a  caste  or  society  of 
learned  men.    Dan.  i,  4;  ii,  2. 

Anszvcr.  It  is  used  in  both  senses  in 
Daniel.  See  v,  30.  It  was  used  in  both 
senses  in  later  times,  why  could  it  not 
have  been  so  used  in  the  time  of  Daniel? 
Whatever  reason  existed  for  its  special 
use  at  any  time,  existed  also  in  Babylon 

57 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

under  Nebuchadnezzar.  ''But  Ezekiel  does 
not  use  the  limited  sense,  nor  does  Jere- 
miah." Why  should  they  ?  They  had  no 
occasion  to  refer  to  the  guild  so  desig- 
nated. The  Chaldeans  were  the  early  in- 
habitants of  Southern  Alesopotamia. 
They  were  distinguished  for  their  learn- 
ing, especially  in  arithmetic  and  astron- 
omy. Their  treatises  were  written  in  their 
own  tongue,  which  became  a  learned 
tongue  in  Babylon,  just  as  Greek  or  Latin 
is  now.  And  just  as  we  call  a  scholar  a 
^'Grecian"  who  understands  the  Greek 
language,  so  they  who  knew  the  ancient 
tongue  were  termed  Chaldeans.  Doubt- 
less Daniel  himself  was  one  of  them, 
though  by  birth  a  Jew.  He  was  sent  to 
school  that  he  might  acquire  "the  learning 
and  tongue  of  the  Chaldeans,"  i,  4.  He- 
rodotus (born  484  B.  C),  who  visited 
Babylon  eighty  or  ninety  years  after 
Daniel,  mentions  the  Chaldeans  as  a  sect 
of  philosophers,  and  appears  to  know  no 
other  use  of  the  term,  and  he  wrote  280 
years  before  the  Maccabees.     The  name 

58 


DID  DANIEL  AVRTTE  DANIEL? 

was  well  established  in  Herodotus'  time. 
It  must  have  existed  before  Daniel. 


XII. 

"The  Hebrew  of  the  Book  Daniel 
favors  a  date  long  after  the  exile,  and  the 
Aramaic  permits  a  late  date." 

The  preceding  charges  against  Daniel 
are  frivolous.  The  only  one  of  them  that 
ever  had  any  weight  —  the  silence  of 
historians  about  Belshazzar  —  has  been 
turned  by  the  inscriptions  into  a  vindica- 
tion, but  when  we  come  to  charge  No.  12, 
the  reader  who  is  not  a  Hebrew  scholar, 
is  apt  to  feel  that  an  accusation  serious 
to  the  last  degree  has  appeared.  But  let 
us  not  be  precipitate.  To  prove  the  date 
of  anv  book  of  the  Old  Testament  from 
its  orthography  and  grammar  is  a  pre- 
carious undertaking.  When  scholars  en- 
deavor to  determine  the  original  text  of 
the  New  Testament,  they  have  abundance 
of  material.     Books  written  in  Greek  be- 

59 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

fore  and  after  and  contemporaneously 
with  the  New  Testament  exist.  Moreover 
there  are  manuscripts  of  the  N.  T.  written 
within  300  years  of  the  Apostles'  times. 
With  much  learning  these  sources  of  in- 
formation have  been  collated  and  a  text 
of  the  Greek  Testament,  approximately 
accurate,  has  been  secured,  though  even 
now  there  are  many  disputed  passages. 
Idioms,  grammar  and  spelling  in  all  lan- 
guages change  with  the  passage  of  years. 
Copyists,  even  when  endeavoring  to 
transcribe  literally,  are  apt  to  use,  now 
and  then,  the  language  of  their  own  day. 
There  are  several  thousands  of  variations 
in  the  manuscripts  of  the  Greek  Scrip- 
tures. 

When  we  come  to  a  determination  of 
the  originals  of  the  Hebrew,  the  difficul- 
ties increase  enormously.  Wq  have  no 
manuscripts  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  earlier 
than  the  ninth  century  of  our  era — thir- 
teen centuries  after  the  latest  books  of  the 
Old  Testament.  According  to  the  Jewish 
tradition,  Ezra  and  the  Great  Synagogue 

60 


DID  DAXIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

collected  the  books  which  constituted  the 
Old  Testament.  We  may  reasonably  as- 
sume that  the  Hebrew  of  their  day  ap- 
peared in  their  work.  But  have  we  the 
books,  in  grammar  and  orthography,  as 
they  left  them?  It  is  not  reasonable  to 
suppose  we  have.  Copies  were  made,  and 
copies  of  those  copies,  and  so  on  through 
a  long  series.  We  may  reverently  believe 
that  the  Holy  Spirit  guarded  copyists 
from  essential  error,  but  to  suppose  that 
in  rhetorical  style  the  exact  language  of 
the  original  writers  has  come  down  to  us 
is  absurd.  Nobody  supposes  it — least  of 
all  Hebraists.  Idiosyncrasies  of  copyists 
may  creep  in.  And  they  have  crept  in  as 
the  additions,  glosses  and  corrections 
found  in  existing  manuscripts  abundantly 
prove.  The  Septuagint,  which  is  the 
Old  Testament  done  into  Greek  by  the 
Jews  of  Alexandria — begun  in  280  B.  C. 
and  continued  for  many  years — is  a  very 
free  rendering  of  the  Hebrew.  If  it  were 
an  exact  translation — which  no  one  sup- 
poses— it  would  show  our  Hebrew  text  to 

61 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

be  imperfect.  Every  writer's  style  varies 
v^ith  his  years,  and  his  orthography  may 
vary  from  moment  to  moment.  I  have 
before  me  a  letter  in  which  the  writer  at 
the  beginning  spells  "honor"  thus,  but 
on  the  third  page  he  spells  it  "honour." 
A  critical  Hebraist  could  easily  find  a 
hundred  years  difference  between  the  fore 
and  latter  part  of  this  letter,  and  might 
even  determine  that  the  latter  part  was 
written  first. 

Much  credit  is  due  to  Hebrew  scholars 
for  their  elucidation  of  the  Hebrew  text — 
a  labor  in  which  conjecture  necessarily 
plays  a  large  part — but,  like  the  rest  of 
mankind,  they  are  liable  to  mistakes  in 
guessing.  The  Hebrew  text,  as  we  have 
it,  is  what  the  scribes  have  transmitted. 
Sometimes  they  have  lengthened  words 
for  clearness ;  sometimes  shortened  words 
to  economize  space.  They  arbitrarily  in- 
troduce silent  letters,  and  exhibit  idio- 
syncrasies in  various  ways.  To  dig 
through  a  manuscript  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury, and  eliminate  the  peculiarities  of  the 

62 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

copyist  who  prepared  it,  so  as  to  deter- 
mine the  exact  language  of  the  manu- 
script from  which  it  was  copied,  and  then 
to  do  similarly  with  that  unknown  manu- 
script, eliminating  the  unknown  peculiari- 
ties of  its  unknown  scribe,  and  to  do  this 
through  a  catena  of  unknown  books,  is 
simply  impossible.  If  the  identical  books, 
which  Ezra  and  the  Great  Assembly 
edited,  should  be  unearthed,  or  if  writings 
contemporaneous  wnth  the  authors  of  the 
Old  Testament  books  should  be  discov- 
ered, we  should  no  more  expect  their  dic- 
tion to  resemble  the  text  transmitted  than 
Chaucer  resembles  the  English  of  the  pres- 
ent day.  Professor  Cheyne,  though  one 
of  the  most  radical  critics,  shows  good 
sense  when  he  savs,  ''From  the  Hebrew  of 
the  Book  of  Daniel  no  important  inference 
as  to  its  date  can  be  safely  drawn."* 

As  to  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel,  Canon 
Driver  says  "it  is  all  but  identical  with 
that  of  Ezra."  Precisely  what  we  should 
expect,  for  Ezra  was  born  and  brought  up 

*Encyc.  Brit.  s.  v.  Daniel. 
63 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

in  Babylon,  and,  moreover,  he  and  his  col- 
leagues   edited    Daniel.     And  if    Ezra's 
Aramaic    suffered    modification     at    the 
hands  of  the  subsequent  scribes,  so  would 
Daniel's. 

Professor  Cobern  very  vigorously  as- 
serts that  all  great  living  Aramaic  schol- 
ars are  a  unit  in  declaring  that  the  Ara- 
maic of  Daniel  was  never  spoken  in  Baby- 
lon.* The  great  living  Aramaic  scholars 
mean,  of  course,  that  the  Aramaic  of  the 
text  recently  discovered  and  now  under- 
going decipherment  differs  somewhat 
from  the  Aramaic  in  which  Ezra  edited 
Daniel.  This  is  very  likely.  Ezra,  though 
brought  up  in  Babylon,  had  removed  to 
Judea  and  had  caught  the  dialect  of  his 
associates  in  Jerusalem;  still,  some  traces 
of  the  Babylonian  style  appear  when  he 
transcribes  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel.  Ezra's 
Aramaic  in  his  own  book  differs  slightly 
from  his  Aramaic  when  editing  Daniel, 
just  as  Professor  Cobern's  English  would 
differ  from  his  English  were  he  editing 

*Hom.  Review,  July.  1903. 
64 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

an  English  writer  of  one  hundred  years 
ago. 

XIII. 

The  thirteenth  charge  that  Nebuchad- 
nezzar could  not  have  been  troubled  by  a 
forgotten  dream  reveals  a  unique  experi- 
ence in  dreams  on  the  part  of  any  one  who 
advances  so  remarkable  a  statement.  So 
also  the  suggestion  that  even  Driver, 
though  'Svith  reserve,"  advances,  of  the 
improbability  of  Daniel's  being  willing  to 
be  classed  among  the  wise  men — he  being 
a  Jew  and  they  idolators.  The  ''reserve" 
is  very  becoming,  seeing  that  Daniel  was 
a  captive  and  that  the  caprice  of  an  Ori- 
ental monarch  was  law.  Daniel  had  no 
choice;  wherever  he  went  in  Babylon  he 
would  be  with  idolators,  and  nothing  in 
his  position  demanded  an  abandonment  of 
his  faith. 

XIV. 

It  appears  that  the  name  should  be 
spelled  Nebuchadrezzar,  that  is,  with  an 

65 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

''r"  instead  of  an  **n."  If  Daniel  made  a 
slip  in  spelling,  he  is  not  unlike  some 
other  great  men.  It  seems  a  pity  that  he 
should  be  denied  existence  for  a  little 
thing  like  that. 

But  let  us  see;  there  may  have  been 
different  ways  of  spelling  a  word  in  those 
days  as  there  are  now.  Ezra  uniformly 
spells  the  King's  name  with  an  "n."  So 
does  the  writer  of  II  Kings  .  So  also 
the  writers  of  I  and  II  Chronicles. 
Ezekiel  uniformly  uses  ''r."  Jeremiah 
spells  the  name  both  ways,  nine  times 
with  ''r"  and  seven  times  with  "n." 
So  that  four  writers  at  least  agree  with 
Daniel,  one  disagrees,  and  one  is  variable. 
Jeremiah  precedes  Daniel  by  a  few  years ; 
Ezra  succeeds.  Did  the  Hebrews  have 
difficulty  in  sounding  the  ''r"  as  a  China- 
man has  to-day?  Or  was  there  some  pe- 
culiarity in  the  Babylonian  letter  which 
placed  it  somewhere  between  the  two 
liquids?  Or  have  we  here  the  work  of 
some  scribe  who  began  to  correct  the  spell- 
ing according  to  his  own  notions  of  pro- 

66 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

priety,  but  ceased  before  completing  his 
task?  In  view  of  the  uncertainty  attach- 
ing- to  the  sounds  of  every  letter  of  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions  and  even  of  several 
letters  of  the  Hebrew,  this  criticism  seems 
more  frivolous  than  the  others. 


XV. 

As  to  Daniel's  youth  when  Ezekiel 
wrote  of  him ;  he  was  over  forty  years, 
probably  over  fifty.  He  had  then  been  emi- 
nent a  score  of  years.  His  wisdom  did  not 
come  slowly  through  long  experience,  but 
at  one  bound,  and  that  through  visions 
which  God  gave  him.  There  have  been 
other  men  as  young  in  places  of  eminence. 
William  Pitt  was  prime  minister  of  Eng- 
land at  twenty-four.  Napoleon  Bonaparte 
manifested  his  military  genius  before  he 
was  thirty;  so  did  Charles  XII.  So  did 
Alexander.  The  very  fact  of  Daniel's 
youth  would  make  his  name  more  notable 
among  his  countrymen. 

67 


OTHER  OBJECTIONS 

The  foregoing  counts  instead  of  les- 
sening our  confidence  in  Daniel;  tend, 
when  carefully  considered,  to  sustain  the 
authenticity  and  genuineness  of  the  book. 
If  these  were  all  that  could  be  said  in 
criticism  there  would  be  little  occasion 
for  discussion.  Let  us  pass  on  to  consid- 
erations of  somewhat  different  character. 

Laudatory  Expressions. 

It  is  alleged  that  expressions,  laudatory 
of  Daniel,  could  not  have  been  inserted  by 
Daniel  himself.  There  is  force  in  this, 
and  it  strengthens  the  presumption  that 
some  scribe  has  added  glosses  in 
this  book,  as  is  the  case  with  other  Old 
Testament  Scriptures.  But  let  us  look  at 
these  passages. 

Dan.  i,  17-19.  "As  for  these  four  chil- 
dren, God  gave  them  knowledge  and  skill 
in  all  learning  and  wisdom;  and  Daniel 

68 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

had  understanding  in  all  visions  and 
dreams  *  *  ^-i^  and  among  all  was 
found  none  like  Daniel,  Hananiah,  Mi- 
shael  and  Azariah."  This  passage  may 
be  a  gloss  by  an  editor,  and  yet  the  writer 
who  commends  his  three  companions 
could  hardly  have  omitted  himself.  That 
would  have  been  an  affectation  of  mod- 
esty. He  is  giving  God  the  honor  for  the 
proficiency  of  the  faithful  youths.  After 
all,  this  is  not  vain  boasting.  It  is  a  decla- 
ration that  God  helps  those  who  are  true 
to  Him. 

Dan.  v,  11-12.  This  is  a  statement  by 
the  Queen-mother  that  Daniel  possessed 
an  excellent  spirit  for  interpreting  dreams 
and  resolving  doubts.  There  is  no  reason 
why  Daniel  should  not  have  written  this. 
He  is  recording  what  the  Queen  said ;  in- 
deed to  have  omitted  it  would  have  left 
the  record  incomplete. 

Dan.  ix,  22-23.  The  angel  speaks  and 
says,  "O  Daniel,  I  am  now  come  forth  to 
give  thee  skill  and  understanding  *  *  * 
for  thou  art  greatly  beloved."  Here,  again, 

69 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

Daniel  is  reporting.  He  had  no  right  to 
suppress  the  commendatory  expression. 
Upon  the  whole,  there  is  no  need  of  re- 
sorting to  editor's  glosses.  There  is  noth- 
ing in  these  "laudatory  expressions"  which 
Daniel  or  any  other  good  man  could  not 
have  written  or  which  he  ought  not  to 
have  written. 

Daniel  Not  Mentioned  by  the  Post  Exilic 
Prophets. 

Haggai,  Zechariah  and  Malachi  do  not 
mention  Daniel.  There  is  no  reason  why 
they  should.  They  do  not  mention  each 
other,  although  Haggai  and  Zechariah 
stood  side  by  side.  Nor  do  they  mention 
Jeremiah  nor  Ezekiel  nor  any  prophets 
whatever,  except  in  the  single  instance, 
Mai.  iv,  5,  where  allusion  is  made  to  Eli- 
jah. Does  this  prove  or  suggest  in  the 
slightest  degree  that  there  were  no  pro- 
phets before  the  exile? 


70 


ALLUSIONS  TO  DANIEL  IN  JEW- 
ISH LITERATURE 

"We  find,"  says  a  critic,  ''no  allusions 
to  the  Book  Daniel  in  Jewish  literature 
earlier  than  the  middle  of  the  second  cen- 
tury B.  C,  while  from  that  time  they  are 
frequent.* 

We  find  very  positive  allusions  to  Dan- 
iel in  the  Book  of  Ezekiel,  but  the  critic 
refers,  of  course,  to  extra  canonical  Jew- 
ish literature.  How  much  of  such  litera- 
ture is  there,  and  how  much  of  it  was 
written  before  the  middle  of  the  second 
century  B.  C.  ?  If  there  were  a  large 
number  of  books  before  that  date,  Daniel 
— supposing  he  had  existed — might  have 
been  mentioned  in  some  of  them.  The 
omission  of  his  name  would  not  disprove 
his  existence,  any  more  than  the  omission 
of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Hosea  and  all  the 
other  prophets  in  the  book  of  Zechariah 

^Philadelphia  Bulletin. 
71 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

would  disprove  their  existence.  Still,  if 
there  were  numerous  chances  for  the  name 
of  Daniel  to  appear  prior  to  the  middle 
of  the  second  century  B.  C,  we  might,  not 
unreasonably,  look  for  it. 

How  many  such  books  are  there  known 
to  be  earlier  than  the  middle  of  the  sec- 
ond century  B.  C.  ?  Just  one ;  Tobit,  writ- 
ten probably  during  the  Persian  domina- 
tion, 533-332  B.  C.  That  book  alludes  to 
no  prophet  but  Amos  and  Jonah. 

The  books  referred  to  as  Jewish  litera- 
ture are : 

Tobit. 

Ecclesiasticus. 

Baruch. 

Judith. 

Susanna. 

Bel  and  the  Dragon. 

Song  of  the  Three  Holy  Children. 

I,  2,  3  and  4  Maccabees. 

I,  2  Esdras. 

Wisdom. 

The  Prayer  of  Manasseh. 

Enoch. 

72 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

The  Rest  of  Esther. 

And  one  or  two  others  still  later. 

Eighteen  or  more. 

None  of  them,  except  Tobit,  was  cer- 
tainly earlier  than  the  middle  of  the  sec- 
ond century  B.  C. 

Baruch  is  in  two  parts — i-iii,  8,  orig- 
inally written  in  Hebrew,  and  iii,  9  to  the 
end,  written  in  Greek.  The  first  or  Hebrew 
portion  is  believed  by  Ewald  and  other 
scholars  to  have  been  written  in  the  fourth 
century  B.  C,  during  the  Persian  period. 
If  it  was,  then  the  critic's  statement  is  dis- 
proved, for  that  portion  does  allude  to  the 
Book  of  Daniel. 

Ecclesiasticus  may  have  been  written 
before  200  B.  C.  or  after  135  B.  C.  It 
does  not  mention  Daniel  and  will  be  con- 
sidered below. 

Of  the  books  written  later  than  the 
middle  of  the  second  century  B.  C.  some 
allude  to  Daniel  and  some  do  not.  Three 
of  them  were  written  for  the  special  pur- 
pose of  honoring  Daniel  and,  of  course, 
they  allude  to  him.    Those  three,  Bel,  Su- 

73 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

sanna  and  the  Song  of  the  Hebrew  Chil- 
dren are  of  no  value  historically.  The 
first  Book  of  Maccabees  is  of  value  his- 
torically. It  was  not  written  to  glorify 
Daniel  and  alludes  to  him  precisely  as  it 
alludes  to  other  worthies  of  ancient  times. 
The  student  may  find  these  apocry* 
phal  books  discussed  in  any  Bible  dic- 
tionary. Baruch  and  I  Alaccabees  will 
reappear  upon  a  subsequent  page. 

Ecclcsiasticus. 

The  Book  Ecclcsiasticus,  or  the  Wis- 
dom of  the  Son  of  Sirach,  though  men- 
tioning many  of  the  worthies  of  the  Israel- 
itish  history,  does  not  mention  Daniel.  It 
is  argued  that  Daniel  could  not  have  ex- 
isted or  at  least  that  his  book  could  not 
have  been  known  to  Ben  Sirach,  else  his 
name  would  have  occurred  among  the 
rest.  There  is  force  in  this,  and  full  value 
should  be  given  to  it. 

Ecclcsiasticus,  through  chapters  xlv  to 
1,  gives  the  list  as  follows  and  in  this 
order:     Enoch,    Noah,   Abraham,   Isaac, 

74 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Jacob,  Moses,  Aaron,  Phinehas,  David, 
Joshua,  Caleb,  Samuel,  Nathan,  Solomon, 
Elijah,  Elisha,  Hezekiah,  Isaiah,  Josiah, 
Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  Zerubbabel,  Joshua, 
son  of  Josedee,  Nehemiah,  Joseph,  Shem, 
Seth,  Adam,  Simon,  son  of  Onias,  Enoch. 
Twenty-eight  Scripture  characters  and 
one  outside  of  Scripture. 

In  looking  at  this  list  it  is  evident  that 
the  names  were  written  as  they  occurred 
to  memory.  There  is  no  chronologic  or- 
der. Shem,  Seth  and  Adam  seem  to  come 
in  as  an  afterthought  and  Enoch  gets  a 
double  mention,  as  if  the  writer  had  for- 
gotten his  first  mention  of  him.  None  of 
the  judges  is  mentioned  except  Samuel. 
We  are  surprised  at  the  omission  of  Mor- 
decai,  seeing  that  the  book  of  Esther  was 
in  existence  before  Ecclesiasticus  and  that 
the  deliverance  of  the  Jews  from  the  ma- 
chinations of  Haman  made  a  profound 
impression  upon  the  national  feeling  and 
was  celebrated  by  a  feast.  Ezra,  too,  is 
omitted,  though  to  him  was  attributed 
the  codification  of  the  sacred  books  and 

75 


DID  DANIEL  WHITE  DANIEL  ? 

the  restoration  of  religion.  Job  is  omitted, 
though  both  he  and  Daniel  are  cited  by 
Ezekiel  as  men  eminent  for  righteousness. 
The  list  is  not  exhaustive  and  is  not  in- 
tended to  be.  The  omission  of  any  name 
is  inconclusive. 

Still,  it  must  be  admitted,  that  Ben 
Sirach  seems  to  have  been  ignorant  of 
Daniel.  But  if  he  were,  he  could  not  have 
read  Ezekiel's  prophecies,  in  which  Noah, 
Daniel  and  Job  are  spoken  of  as  the  wisest 
and  best  men  in  the  world.  This  is  quite 
possible,  for  all  the  Books  of  Scripture 
were  not  possessed  by  everybody.  How- 
ever, it  is  more  probable  that,  as  the 
names  are  given  just  as  they  came  to 
mind,  his  memory  played  a  not  infrequent 
trick.  There  was  certainly  a  Daniel,  wise 
and  well  known,  as  is  clear  from  Ezekiel's 
words  (Ezek.  xxviii,  3,  xiv,  20). 

The  value  of  Ecclesiasticus  in  this  con- 
troversy depends,  of  course,  upon  its  date. 
If  written  after  the  Maccabean  age,  it  is 
of  no  consequence  whether  Ben  Sirach 
forgot  Daniel  or  not.     It  is  difficult  to  fix 

76 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  date.  The  writer  was  famiHar  with 
the  Septuagint,  but  as  that  version  cov- 
ered many  years  in  its  composition,  this 
fact  does  not  help  us  much.  Some  give 
the  date  as  131  B.  C.  The  date  generally 
received  is  about  200  B.  C.  Simon,  son 
of  Onias,  whose  name  closed  Ben  Sirach's 
list  of  worthies,  resisted  the  attempt  of 
Ptolemy  IV  to  enter  the  temple,  B.  C.  217, 
so  that  Ecclesiasticus  appears  to  have  been 
written  after  that  event.  Even  here  we 
are  at  a  loss,  for  there  were  several  Si- 
mons, sons  of  priests  named  Onias. 

Taking  200  B.  C.  as,  upon  the  whole, 
the  most  probable  date  of  Ecclesiasticus, 
his  omission  of  Daniel's  name,  though  no 
disproof  of  the  existence  of  the  Book 
of  Daniel,  does  allow  room  for  suspic- 
ion. So  far  in  our  examination  it  is  the 
only  fact  which  can  raise  the  faintest 
doubt  of  Daniel's  genuineness.  Faint  as 
it  is,  it  may  be  counted  in  favor  of  the 
Maccabean  hypothesis. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  position  of 
Ecclesiasticus     among     the     uncanonical 

77 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

Jewish  books  weighs  strongly  against  the 
Maccabean  theory.  Ecclesiasticus  is  a 
book  of  moral  teaching.  It  was  highly 
esteemed  in  the  early  Christian  Church; 
was  read  in  the  public  assemblies,  is 
quoted  with  approval  by  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria, Dionysius,  Tertullian,  Cyprian, 
Augustine  and  others.  It  presents  the 
dominant  type  of  Jewish  thought  at  the 
time  that  the  Canon  was  taking  a  fixed 
form.  Its  conception  of  God  is  Mosaic, 
while  legalism  is  fastening  itself  more  and 
more  in  the  principles  and  practice  of  god- 
ly men.  In  short,  it  presents  what  in  the 
opinion  of  the  Jewish  doctors  of  that  day 
was  true  religion.  In  moral  and  religious 
teaching  it  was  superior  to  several  can- 
onical books  of  the  Old  Testament  and 
gives  the  finest  expression  of  Palestinian 
theology  of  the  two  or  three  centuries  fol- 
lowing Nehemiah  that  we  possess. 

Why  then  was  it  not  included  in  the 
Jewish  Canon  ?  There  is  one  answer  only 
to  this  question.  The  book  was  not  an- 
cient enough;  200  B.  C.  was  altogether 

78 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

too  modern  a  date  for  any  canonical  book. 
Notwithstanding  the  high  regard  felt  for 
Ecclesiasticus,  it  lacked  the  element  of 
antiquity,  which  was  essential  in  any  book 
holding  place  in  the  Canon. 

But  Daniel  is  in  the  Canon.  Daniel 
then  must  have  been  wTitten  before  200 
B.  C.  It  must  have  been  already  venerable 
when  Ecclesiasticus  was  composed.  Ec- 
clesiasticus is  thus  a  witness  for  and  not 
against  the  genuineness  of  Daniel. 


79 


THE  CANON 

For  a  learned  discussion  of  this  subject 
the  reader  is  referred  to  the  article 
''Canon"  by  Bishop  Westcott  in  Smith's 
Dictionary. 

The  Canon  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures, 
like  the  Canon  of  the  New  Testament, 
was  of  gradual  formation.  We  read  of 
the  ''Book  of  the  Law"  in  Deut.  xxxi,  25, 
and  elsewhere  in  the  Pentateuch.  In  the 
reign  of  Josiah  the"Book  of  the  Law"was 
found  in  the  temple.  This  was  Deuter- 
onomy and  perhaps  the  whole  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch. Records  were  added  by  Joshua 
(Josh,  xxiv,  26).  Samuel  wrote  in  a  book 
and  laid  it  up  before  the  Lord  (I  Sam.  x, 
25).  Isaiah  (xxxiv,  16)  refers  to  the 
"Book  of  the  Lord"  as  to  an  authoritative 
compilation.  Zechariah  (vii,  12)  speaks 
of  "the  Law"  and  the  "former  Prophets." 
But  it  is  to  the  period  of  the  return  from 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  captivity  that  we  naturally  look  for  a 
formal  Canon.     Upon  Ezra  fell  the  duty 
of  reorganizing  the  Jewish  Church.    That 
he  and  his  colleagues  should  collect  and 
publish   the   Scriptures   seems   inevitable, 
and  the  Jewish  tradition  that  he  did  so 
rests  upon  the  highest  probability.     And 
that  Nehemiah  should  further  enlarge  the 
collection,  as  is  stated  in  II  Mace,  ii,  13,  is 
equally  probable.     When  the  addition  of 
books  to  the  authorized  Scriptures  ceased 
it  is   difficult  to  determine,   but  it  must 
have  been  long  anterior  to  Ecclesiasticus 
(200  B.  C),  else  that  book  would  have 
been   included   in   the    Canon.      Nothing 
composed  after  the  Persian  period,  which 
ended  112  B.  C,  can  be  reasonably  sup- 
posed to  have  place  in  the  sacred  Scrip- 
tures of  the  Jews. 

The  Book  Daniel  is  in  the  Canon.  The 
presumption,  therefore,  is  that  it  was 
written  at  the  time  in  which  it  purports 
to  have  been  written ;  at  all  events,  that  it 
cannot  be  the  product  of  the  Maccabean 
age. 

81 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Daniel  N^ot  in  the  Prophets. 

Daniel  is  in  the  Canon,  but  *Svhy,"  it 
is  asked,  "was  not  the  book  placed  among 
the  prophets  instead  of  among  the  miscel- 
laneous sacred  writings,  w^hich  embrace 
the  latest  books  of  the  Old  Testament?" 

The  classification  of  the  books  under 
three  heads  is  as  old  as  Ecclesiasticus ;  the 
Law,  the  Prophets,  the  Other  Books — the 
third  class  elsewhere  called  the  Psalms,  or 
the  Holy  Writings,  i.e.^  the  Hagiographa. 

In  these  divisions,  as  they  have  come 
down  to  us,  the  books  are  arranged  as 
follows : 

The  Law — 

Genesis,  Exodus,  Leviticus,  Numbers, 
Deuteronomy. 

The  Prophets — 

Joshua,  Judges,  I  and  II  Samuel,  I  and 
II  Kings,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel  and 
the  twelve  minor  prophets. 

The  Hagiographa — 

Psalms,  Proverbs,  Job,  Canticles,  Ruth, 
Lamentations,  Ecclesiastes,  Esther,  Dan- 
iel, Ezra,  Nehemiah,  I  and  II  Chronicles. 

82 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

A  satisfactory  explanation  of  this  ar- 
rangement has  never  been  given,  although 
attempts  at  explanation  are  numerous. 
Why  are  the  historical  books  Joshua, 
Judges,  Samuel  and  Kings  placed  among 
the  prophets  ?  Wliy  are  not  the  historical 
books  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Chronicles  and 
Ruth  placed  with  them.  There  appears  to 
be  a  chronological  order — the  most  an- 
cient books  appearing  in  the  first  two 
classes — but  then  Proverbs  belongs  to  the 
time  of  the  monarchy,  preceding  all  the 
prophets,  except,  possibly,  Isaiah.  Canon 
Driver  thinks  Job  belongs  to  the  time  of 
Jeremiah — others  think  it  much  earlier. 
Some  of  the  Psalms  are  certainly  ancient. ' 

No  modern  codifier,  whatever  his  view 
of  the  date  of  any  of  the  books,  would 
produce  such  an  arrangement.  The  Sep- 
tuagint  arranges  the  books  differently 
from  the  Hebrew,  but  it  does  not  classify. 
Most  of  the  Hagiographa  are  the  later 
books,  but  all  are  not. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  add  another  con- 
jecture to  those  already  in  existence,  but 

83 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

upon  one  fact  we  can  fix,  viz.,  that  the 
Hagiographa  were  more  widely  read  and 
more  affectionately  regarded  than  the 
other  books,  though  all  were  revered. 

But  why  is  not  Daniel  placed  among 
the  prophets?  Perhaps  the  reason  is  that 
Daniel  was  not  a  prophet  in  the  same 
sense  as  the  prophets  generally.  x\ll  the 
prophets,  Daniel  alone  excepted,  were 
preachers  to  the  men  of  their  generation. 
Their  predictions  were  incidental.  Daniel 
was  not  a  preacher.  He  was  a  seer  of 
visions.  His  book  is  like  the  Apocalypse 
of  St.  John,  which  cannot  be  classed  with 
the  Gospels  or  Epistles.  It  bears  a  re- 
semblance, indeed,  to  Zechariah  and  Eze- 
kiel,  but  it  differs  from  them  more  than  it 
resembles  them.  And  Zechariah  and  Eze- 
kiel  were  primarily  preachers,  not  seers. 
This  being  so,  the  place  of  Daniel  is  not 
improperly  among  the  devotional  and  con- 
templative Hagiographa  along  with  such 
books  as  the  Psalms  and  Job,  If,  however, 
it  had  been  placed  among  the  prophets,  it 
would  occasion  no   surprise,   seeing  that 

84 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Joshua,  Judges  and  Kings  are  in  that 
category,  and  the  compilers  of  the  Sep- 
tuagint  evidently  thought  that  the  more 
appropriate  place,  for  they  put  the  book 
next  after  Ezekiel. 

But  "it  is  among  the  latest  books  of  the 
Old  Testament,"*  says  the  critic  quoted 
above.  Naturally;  it  is  one  of  the  later 
books.  Its  place  chronologically  is  imme- 
diately before  Ezra,  where  it  is  found  in 
the  Hagiographa. 

There  is  another  consideration  which 
may  account  for  the  omission  of  Daniel 
from  the  class  styled  the  "prophets."  Some 
of  the  Jewish  doctors  held  the  notion  that 
there  could  be  no  prophet  out  of  Palestine. 
There  was  objection  on  this  account  to 
classing  Ezekiel  among  the  prophets,  al- 
though he  was  a  priest,  and  he  was  ad- 
mitted upon  the  theory  that  his  prophecy 
(Ezek.  xvii)  was  given  before  the  cap- 
tivity. No  such  theory  could  be  advanced 
in  the  case  of  Daniel.  By  putting  Daniel 
in  the  Hagiographa  the  scruples  of  these 

*Prof.  Curtis. 

85 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

narrow  constructionists  would  be  relieved, 
while  still  the  book  would  take  its  place 
in  the  sacred  Canon. 

In  the  foregoing  pages  will  be  found  all 
the  arguments  that  have  been  advanced 
against  the  genuineness  and  historical 
credibility  of  the  Book  Daniel — all  the 
arguments  except  those  of  purely  subjec- 
tive character.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
say  that  they  are  worthless.  But,  lest  the 
reader  should  be  led  to  a  contempt  for 
scholarship,  it  is  only  right  to  say  that 
these  reasons  in  themselves  are  as  worth- 
less in  the  judgment  of  scholarly  critics  as 
they  are  in  the  judgment  of  other  people. 
It  is  really  upon  what  I  have  called  sub- 
jective considerations  that  the  critical  con- 
clusions depend.  These  considerations 
will  be  presented  in  subsequent  pages. 


86 


EVIDENCE   SUSTAINING  DANIEL 

This  statement  has  recently  appeared  in 
print.  ''There  is  no  extant  evidence  what- 
ever that  the  book  (Daniel)  originated  in 
the  exile."* 

One  is  at  a  loss  to  understand  such  a 
declaration  from  the  pen  of  an  intelligent 
person.  There  is  more  evidence  for  Dan- 
iel in  the  exile  than  for  Ezekiel,  yet  no  one 
doubts  that  Ezekiel  wrote  in  the  exile. 
Ezekiel' s  position  rests  wholly  upon  the 
statements  of  his  own  book.  Without 
that  book  we  could  not  know  that  Ezekiel 
had  been  in  the  exile  or  that  he  had  ever 
lived.  The  same  may  be  said  of  most  of 
the  prophets.  Under  these  circumstances 
the  statement  at  the  opening  of  this  chap- 
ter is  remarkable;  one  wonders  what  the 
writer  can  mean.  He  may  mean  that 
among   the    recently    deciphered    inscrip- 

*Prof.  Curtis,  Philadelphia  Bulletin;  Prof.  Col- 
bern,  Horn.  Review,  July,  1903. 

87 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

tioiis  at  Babylon  the  name  of  Daniel  does 
not  appear.  Of  course  it  does  not,  and 
the  excavators  will  search  long  before 
they  find  the  name  of  any  Jewish  captive 
in  the  vainglorious  inscriptions  of  Baby- 
lonian Kings.  But  if  the  writer  means 
that  events  narrated  by  Daniel  find  no 
confirmation  in  the  inscriptions  he  is  mis- 
taken, as  will  appear  below. 

The  Captivity. — The  Jews  were  cap- 
tives in  Babylonia.  This  fact  does  not  ap- 
pear in  the  inscriptions,  nor  is  likely  to. 
It  is  stated  by  Daniel ;  but  as  Daniel's  ac- 
curacy is  challenged  we  may  quote  Be- 
rosus,  the  heathen  historian.  "Nebuchad- 
nezzar arranged  to  bring  to  Babylon  the 
captives  of  the  Jews,  and  when  the  cap- 
tives arrived  he  appointed  colonies  for 
them  in  the  most  suitable  parts  of  Baby- 
lonia." 

Written  in  Babylon. — What  we  may 
call  the  ''atmosphere"  of  the  book  betrays 
its  place  of  origin.  It  was  Babylon.  Kue- 
nen  says,  "I  am  certain,  after  much  ex- 
amination, that  the  writer  of  the  Book  of 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Daniel  shows  a  most  intimate  personal  ac- 
quaintance with  the  palace  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar and  the  affairs  of  the  Babylonian 
Court  and  Empire,  and  that  the  book  was 
written  during  the  exile,"  and  Lenormant, 
''The  more  I  read  and  reread  Daniel,  the 
more  I  am  struck  with  the  truth  of  the 
tableaux  of  the  Babylonian  Court  traced 
in  the  first  six  chapters.  Whoever  is  not 
the  slave  of  preconceived  opinions  must 
confess  when  comparing  these  with  the 
cuneiform  monuments  that  they  are  really 
ancient  and  written  but  a  short  distance 
from  the  Courts  themselves." 

The  clay  tablets  and  other  inscriptions 
now  undergoing  decipherment  reveal  the 
life  of  the  Babylonian  Court  and  people. 
They  show  a  people  given  over  to  supersti- 
tion ;  a  belief  in  magic,  exorcisms,  charms, 
talismans,  prognostications.  Hundreds 
of  tablets,  prepared  with  the  utmost  care, 
are  covered  with  magical  formulae.  A 
class  of  men  existed  who  could  use  these 
writings.  Astronomical  observations  were 
made  and  reports  thereon  prepared  and 

89 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

sent  to  the  Court.  Eclipses  figure  as  por- 
tending events,  good  or  bad,  according  to 
the  day  or  month  in  which  they  occurred. 
This  is  precisely  what  we  find  in  Daniel. 
Moreover,  all  we  gather  from  secular  his- 
torians shows  a  government  as  Daniel  de- 
picts it,  a  monarch  absolute  master  of  the 
lives  and  liberties  of  all  his  subjects,  the 
law  being  his  will  or  whim  and  changing 
as  his  fancy  changed.  But  when  Daniel 
gives  his  brief  experience  of  the  Persian 
rule  we  see  Law,  as  something  superior 
even  to  the  will  of  Kings,  beginning  to  as- 
sume form — "the  law^  of  the  Medes  and 
Persians  which  altereth  not."  Such  law 
originating,  it  is  true,  in  the  royal  decree, 
but,  once  announced,  binding  its  originator. 
Darius  the  Alede  does  a  thing  against  his 
own  wishes — Nebuchadnezzar  is  untram- 
meled  by  any  traditional  law. 

The  man  who  wTote  the  Book  of  Daniel 
gives  no  excursus  on  this  significant  dif- 
ference ;  he  probably  did  not  perceive  the 
profound  change  which  had  come.  He 
simply  records  the  facts  as  they  occurred. 

90 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DAXIEL? 

There  is  the  mark  of  the  contemporary 
writer  here.  No  Jew  whose  people  had 
been  Hving  for  centuries  under  Persian 
and  Grecian  rule  could  relate  with  such 
unconscious  simplicity  the  actual  condition 
of  affairs  in  Babylon  370  years  before  his 
own  time. 

Ezckicl. — Ezekiel  was  a  contemporary 
of  Daniel.  He  was  a  Jewish  priest  and 
wrote  in  Babylon  the  book  which  bears 
his  name.  He  was  held  in  high  esteem  by 
his  fellow  exiles  and  was  much  consulted 
by  them.  If  Daniel  was  in  Babylon  in 
high  official  position  Ezekiel  must  have 
known  it.  But  he  need  not  necessarily 
mention  Daniel  in  his  book.  He  gives  no 
catalogue  of  the  great  men  of  his  people. 
The  Jewish  writers  of  later  date  were 
fond  of  such  enumeration,  but  not  the 
writers  of  canonical  Scriptures.  If  Daniel 
had  not  been  mentioned  by  Ezekiel  it 
would  not  surprise  us.  Moreover,  being 
a  priest,  we  might  suppose  he  had  such 
scruples  as  Canon  Driver  thinks  Daniel 
ought  to  have  had,  but  which  Joseph  in 

91 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Egypt   and    Daniel    in    Babylon    did   not 
have,  and  which  in  more  recent  and  more 
degenerate    days    some    Jews    did    have, 
namely,  a  scruple  about  serving  in  a  non- 
Jewish  Court,  and  so  have  omitted  Dan- 
iel's name  purposely.     But  it  happens  that 
Ezekiel     does     mention     Daniel.     Three 
times    the    name    comes    in    incidentally. 
Speaking  in  irony  to. the  Prince  of  Tyre 
he  says,  ''Behold  thou  art  wiser  than  Dan- 
iel," Ezek.  xxviii,  3.   The  Daniel  to  whom 
he  refers  must  have  been  a  man  prominent 
for  wisdom.     Who  was  that  man?     He 
must  have  been  known  to  Ezekiel's  con- 
temporaries and  well  known.     How  non- 
sensical to  fancy  it  was  some  obscure  per- 
son unknown  otherwise  until  some  "pious 
and   learned   Jew"   manufactured   a   his- 
torical romance  nearly  four  hundred  years 
afterward.     Ezekiel     might     have     said 
"wiser   than    Solomon,"    but    instead   he 
finds  a  man  as  wise  as  that  king  and  much 
better.     He  must  have  known  that  Daniel 
existed,  and  that  he  was  wise  and  that  he 
was  known,  else  all  point  in  his  irony  is 

lost. 

92 


DID  DxVNIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Again  Ezekiel  speaks  of  Daniel  twice 
in  chapter  xiv,  14-20.  "When  the  land 
sinneth  against  me,  though  Noah,  Daniel 
and  Job  were  in  it,  they  shall  deliver  but 
their  own  souls  by  their  righteousness, 
saith  the  Lord  God." 

Two  things  are  indicated  by  this  col- 
location of  names.  First,  that  Daniel 
must  have  been  eminent  for  righteous- 
ness, and  second,  that  Ezekiel,  strict  Jew 
though  he  was,  had  come  to  see  that  holi- 
ness was  not  monopolized  by  the  descend- 
ants of  Abraham.  He  might  have  chosen 
three  names  from  his  own  nation.  In- 
stead, he  selects  from  the  whole  race. 
Noah,  the  second  father  of  mankind,  who 
for  his  godliness  was  spared  when  all 
others  were  destroyed ;  Job,  a  Gentile, 
who  was  honored  for  his  goodness  by  a 
place  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  and  Dan- 
iel, a  Jew.  Ezekiel  could  not  have  pro- 
nounced higher  encomium  upon  Daniel 
than  he  has  by  this  collocation.  There 
wxre  Abraham,  Moses,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah 
and  many  others,  but  as  the  representative 

93 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

of  Israel  he  takes  Daniel,  his  contempo- 
rary. The  halo  of  antiquity  which  hides 
many  faults  had  not  gathered  around  the 
name  of  Daniel.  Daniel  must  have  been 
marked  by  signal  and  singular  excellence. 
It  is  not  sufficient  that  he  was  a  good  man. 
There  were  many  such.  He  must  have 
been  extraordinarily  holy,  a  special  recip- 
ient of  God's  favor.  Noah  and  Job  were 
believed  to  have  had  intercourse  with  God. 
Nothing  less  must  have  been  believed  of 
Daniel. 

Let  any  reasonable  man,  critic  or  not, 
face  this  fact.  Out  of  all  the  saints  and 
heroes  of  Israel,  Daniel  was  chosen  to  be 
coupled  with  Noah  and  Job.  What  can 
this  mean  but  that  marked  displays  of 
God's  favor  had  been  made  to  him — ex- 
traordinary displays,  superhuman  displays 
as  to  Noah  and  Job?  Ezekiel  must  have 
believed  this.  Of  whom  did  he  believe  it? 
Of  a  man  who  was  going  to  be  created  in 
the  imagination  of  a  Jewish  romancer  400 
years  after?  That  of  course  is  nonsense. 
Accordingly  we  find  critics  admitting  that 

94 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

''there  may  have  been  a  real  Daniel  at  the 
Babylonian  court  whose  experiences  may 
have  resembled  some  of  those  told  in  the 
Book  of  Daniel."     This  "may  have  been" 
is  a  somewhat  ungracious  form  of  admit- 
ting a  fact ;  but  it  is  better  than  stubbornly 
sticking  to  an  absurdity.     The  admission, 
however,  is  reluctant,  so  reluctant  that  it 
is  followed  by  the  insinuation  that  ''the 
reference  looks  like  a  reference  to  an  an- 
cient worthy  of  the  dim  past;  and  popular 
tradition  possibly  transferred  such  an  an- 
cient one  to  the  exile  period ;"  and  so  the 
admission  is  counterbalanced  and  a  doubt 
left  to  linger  in  a  reader's  mind. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  argue  with 
so  shadowy  a  thing  as  a  "possibly."  But 
as  we  are  searching  for  the  truth,  we  will 
follow  this  ancient  worthy  of  the  dim  past 
whose  name  was  Daniel,  but  who  was  not 
Daniel  of  Babylon.  Who  was  this  "an- 
cient worthy"?  We  search  everywhere 
for  him,  in  profane  and  sacred  history. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  hint  of  him  any- 
where.   We  find  Noah  and  Job  and  abun- 

95 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

dant  references  to  them.  We  find  also 
abundant  references  to  Daniel  of  the  Book 
Daniel,  and  to  no  other  Daniel.  How  can 
we  characterize  this  kind  of  criticism? 
Why  not  make  a  shorter  cut  and  transfer 
Ezekiel  also  to  the  Maccabean  age? 

Ezra-Nehemiah. — In  Ezra  and  Nehe- 
miah  there  is  no  mention  of  Daniel  by 
name.  This  has  been  taken  as  proof  that 
the  Book  of  Daniel  was  not  known  to  the 
wTiters  of  those  books.  Neither  do  we 
find  in  these  books  any  mention  of  Eze- 
kiel ;  must  we  discard  Ezekiel  also  ?  What 
is  more  to  the  point,  however,  is  that  we 
find  in  Neh.  ix,  32,  a  quotation  from  Deut. 
vii,  9,  altered  as  Daniel  had  altered  it  in 
Dan.  ix,  4. 

Baruch.  —  Chapters  i  and  ii  of  the 
apocryphal  Book  Baruch  are  assigned  by 
some  scholars  to  the  fourth  century  before 
Christ.  If  this  date  be  correct^  then  the 
writer  of  that  book  would  seem  to  have 
know  the  Book  of  Daniel,  which  must  in 
that  case  have  been  in  existence  long  be- 
fore the  Maccabees.     In  i,  ii  of  Baruch 

96 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  author  bids  men  pray  for  Nabuchod- 
onosor,  King  of  Babylon  and  for  Balthas- 
ar  his  son.  How  did  he  learn  of  Bel- 
shazzar?  He  could  have  learned  it  from 
the  Book  Daniel,  and  undoubtedly  he  did. 
There  is  no  other  book,  of  which  we  now 
know,  containing  Belshazzar's  name. 
Opinions  vary  as  to  Baruch's  date,  and  it 
is  not  impossible  that  it  is  the  work  of  sev- 
eral hands  at  long  intervals.  Baruch  did 
not  get  his  information  from  a  book  writ- 
ten after  the  overthrow  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes;  whatever  value  its  testimony 
brings,  antagonizes  the  theory  that  Daniel 
was  wTitten  in  163  B.  C. 

/  Maccabees. — The  time  assigned  by 
the  critics  for  the  writing  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel  was  one  in  which  the  leading  Jews 
knew  they  had  no  prophet  among  them — 
knew  they  had  not  had  one  for  many  years 
past — and  could  not  expect  one  for  many 
years  to  come.  The  first  Book  of  Mac- 
cabees— written  120-100  B.  C. — describ- 
ing the  calamities  consequent  upon  the 
death  of  Judas  Maccabeus,  B.  C.  161,  says 

97 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

that  ''there  was  great  affliction  in  Israel 
such  as  had  not  been  since  the  last  prophet 
appeared  among  them."  IManifestly  this 
had  been  a  long  time.  It  was  then  about 
270  years  since  }\Ialachi.  Again  in  I 
]\Iac.  iv,  16,  the  Jews  laid  away  the  altar 
stones  polluted  by  Antiochus  Epiphanes 
"until  the  coming  of  some  prophet  to  de- 
cide respecting  them."  And  further,  ac- 
cording to  I  ]\Iac.  xiv,  41,  ''Simon  was 
constituted  leader  and  high  priest  forever 
until  some  faithful  prophet  should  arise." 
With  such  a  condition  of  public  sentiment, 
how  can  it  be  pretended  that  the  book 
which  is  one  of  the  most  important  of  the 
prophecies  could  have  been  written  at  that 
time?  From  Malachi  down  to  the  date  of 
I  Maccabees  there  was  no  prophet.  Yet 
the  critics  are  trying  to  believe  that  at  that 
very  time  one  of  the  greatest  prophets 
wrote  and  that  the  people  received  his 
prophecies ! 

Mattathias  was  the  father  of  the  Mac- 
cabee  brothers.  He  raised  the  standard  of 
revolt  against  the  cruel  Antiochus.    After 

98 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

his  death,  his  sons  succeeded  him  in  turn, 
maintaining  the  courage  of  Israel  and  in 
cam.paign  after  campaign  withstanding 
the  armies  of  the  Grecian  tyrant.  The 
aged  hero  died  B.  C.  i66.  Before  his 
death  he  exhorted  his  sons  to  call  to  re- 
membrance what  acts  their  fathers  did  in 
their  time;  alluded  to  Abraham,  Joseph, 
Joshua,  Caleb  and  Elijah ;  and  then  added 
"Ananias,  Azarias  and  Misael,  by  believ- 
ing, were  saved  out  of  the  flame.  Daniel 
for  his  innocency  was  saved  from  the 
mouth  of  lions."  I  Mac.  ii,  51,  60.  This 
was  before  the  alleged  date  of  Daniel,  and 
Mattathias  was  referring  to  deeds  then 
ancient. 

If  ^klattathias  spoke  this,  the  critic's 
theory  of  the  date  of  Daniel  collapses. 
But  to  save  the  theory  it  is  suggested  that 
Mattathias  did  not  say  these  words — that 
the  speech  is  put  into  his  mouth  by  the 
writer  of  the  book.  Very  well.  Then  the 
writer  saw  nothing  improbable  in  Matta- 
thias' being  acquainted  with  the  history  of 
Daniel  and  the  Book  of  Daniel  must  have 

99 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

been  esteemed  canonical.  If  held  as  can- 
onical, it  must  have  preceded  the  times  of 
the  Maccabees  by  many  years. 

But  further,  the  first  Book  of  Maccabees 
not  only  presupposes  the  existence  of  Dan- 
iel, but  it  displays  an  acquaintance  with 
the  Septuagint  version  of  the  book.  The 
Book  of  Daniel  had  had  time  to  get  itself 
translated  into  the  famous  Alexandrian 
version.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  this 
could  be  unless  the  Book  Daniel  existed 
long  before  Antiochus  Epiphanes. 

The  Books  Bel  and  the  Dragon,  Susan- 
na and  the  Song  of  the  Holy  Children 
stand  in  a  relation  to  the  Book  Daniel 
similar  to  that  of  the  apocryphal  gospels 
to  the  gospels  of  Matthew,  Alark,  Luke 
and  John.  The  apocrypha  in  both  cases 
are  the  product  of  a  degenerate  age. 

Josephus. — Josephus  gives  a  history  of 
the  Jewish  nation  from  Abraham  down  to 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  A.  D.  70, 
Narrating  incidents  of  the  struggle  with 
Antiochus  Epiphanes,  he  says  that  these 
things   came   to  pass   ''according  to   the 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

prophecy  of  Daniel  which  was  given  four 
hundred  and  eight  years  before"  the 
events  in  the  time  of  Antiochus.*  Of  the 
behef  of  Josephus  no  one  has  any  doubt. 
With  him  the  Book  of  Daniel  is  an  in- 
tegral part  of  the  canonical  Scriptures  of 
the  Jews.  The  critics  say  he  was  mis- 
taken. He  probably  knew  more  of  the 
matter  than  all  the  critics  in  the  world. 

Of  especial  interest  is  the  narrative  he 
gives  of  the  visit  of  Alexander  the  Great 
to  Jerusalem.!  It  is  to  the  effect  that 
w^hile  besieging  Tyre,  Alexander  de- 
manded assistance  from  the  Jews ;  that  the 
high  priest  refused  on  the  ground  of  his 
oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Persians  against 
whom  Alexander  was  fighting;  that, 
therefore,  the  angry  conqueror  deter- 
mined to  punish  the  Jews,  and  as  soon  as 
opportunity  occurred,  set  out  for  Jeru- 
salem ;  that  the  spectacle  of  a  procession 
of  priests  arrested  him;  that  instead  of 
slaughtering  the  inhabitants  he  offered 
sacrifice  in  the  temple ;  that  he  explained 

*Ant.,  XII.,  7,  6.     tAnt.,  XL,  8,  5. 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

his  conduct  to  Parmenio,  his  heutenant, 
by  saying  he  had  had  a  dream  in  which 
he  saw  this  procession  and  that  in  his 
dream  he  had  received  assurance  of  vic- 
tory. The  narrative  goes  on  to  say  that 
the  priests  showed  Alexander  the  pro- 
phecies in  the  Book  of  Daniel  concerning 
himself. 

No  reason  exists  for  doubting  this 
story,  and  if  Josephus  had  not  mentioned 
the  Book  of  Daniel,  no  question  would 
ever  have  arisen.  But  as  the  existence  of 
the  book  at  that  time  demolishes  the  Mac- 
cabean  theory,  Josephus  is  assailed.  "The 
impossibility  of  the  Greek  consulting  Jew- 
ish oracles,"  "the  miraculous  dream,"  "the 
silence  of  Roman  historians,"  "the  gen- 
eral unlikelihood  of  the  visit." 

Now  it  may  be  affirmed  without  hesi- 
tation that  all  the  circumstances  confirm 
the  story  of  Josephus.  Alexander  de- 
feated the  Persians  at  the  battle  of  Issus 
(.333  B.  C).  Darius  with  his  dispirited 
army  fell  back  to  the  Euphrates.  Alex- 
ander did  not  pursue.     Why  not?     The 

1 02 


DID  DANIEL  WKITE  DANIEL? 

reason  is  plain.  He  had  but  50,000  men ; 
the  Persians  could  meet  him  with  a  mil- 
lion. Moreover,  every  city  in  Asia  Minor 
and  Syria  was  under  Persian  domination. 
To  leave  these  hostile  cities  in  his  rear, 
while  he  should  make  a  march  of  500 
miles,  with  every  chance  of  having  his 
base  of  supplies  cut  off  and  with  certain 
destruction  if  he  should  meet  a  check, 
would  have  been  rashness  of  which  not 
even  he  could  be  guilty.  Accordingly,  as 
we  know,  he  proceeded  to  capture  every 
city  in  Syria.  Some  yielded  readily.  Some 
resisted  and  were  cruelly  destroyed.  Tyre 
resisted  stoutly  and  cost  him  much  loss  of 
time.     Cruel  vengeance  fell  upon  it. 

But  Jerusalem  was  not  destroyed.  In- 
stead, the  Jews  were  treated  kindly,  their 
taxes  during  the  sabbatical  year  were  re- 
mitted, and  other  favors  were  granted. 
Something  happened  to  account  for  their 
exemption  from  the  common  fate  of  all 
friends  of  Persia.  Jerusalem  was  friendly 
to  Persia  and  with  good  reason.  Persia 
had  released  the  Jews  from  captivity,  had 

103 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

supplied  the  returning  Israelites  with  food 
and  money,  had  held  off  envious  neigh- 
bors and  at  much  cost  had  rehabilitated 
Jerusalem  and  restored  Jewish  national- 
ity. Of  all  the  Syrian  cities  Jerusalem 
had  most  cause  for  gratitude  to  Persia, 
and  it  was  grateful.  AMiy  then  was  it  not 
destroyed  as  was  every  other  friend  of 
Persia?  Something  happened.  Josephus 
tells  us  what  it  was. 

Was  it  remarkable  that  Alexander  con- 
sulted the  Jewish  oracles?  He  looked 
upon  himself  as  chosen  by  the  gods  for  a 
great  enterprise.  He  consulted  every 
oracle  which  he  could.  He  visited  the 
shrine  of  Gordium.  He  made  the  toil- 
some journey  to  the  temple  of  Ammon  in 
North  Africa,  to  consult  the  priesthood 
there.  Instead  of  improbability,  there  is 
the  highest  probability  of  his  seeking  in- 
formation at  the  shrine  of  any  god.  He 
was  undertaking  a  desperate  enterprise. 
The  task  before  him  would  deter  any 
prudent  commander.  He  would  sustain 
his  courage  and  the  courage  of  his  sol- 

104 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

diers  by  seeking  supernatural  counsel. 
Seeing  a  sight  which  recalls  a  dream  is  a 
common  experience.  Advancing  to  recon- 
noiter  an  enemy's  town  is  a  customary 
military  procedure.  There  is  no  improb- 
ability in  all  this.  Do  the  Roman  his- 
torians omit  mention  of  this  visit?  No 
doubt  they  do.  They  have  little  to  say 
about  the  Jews.  There  is  never  a  mention 
in  all  their  histories  of  the  heroic  strug- 
gle of  the  Maccabees.  Josephus'  story 
bears  every  mark  of  truth.  And  here  we 
find  the  Book  of  Daniel  170  years  before 
the  imaginary  Maccabean  romance. 

That  the  Jevv^ish  people  were  treated 
kindly  by  Alexander  is  unquestioned.  Jo- 
sephus explains  it.  The  only  other  hypoth- 
esis to  account  for  their  immunity  is 
that,  instead  of  refusing  to  transfer  their 
allegiance,  they  hastened  to  acknowledge 
Alexander.  There  is  no  evidence  of  this 
and  it  is  unlikely;  but,  if  they  did,  what 
could  have  induced  such  conduct?  To 
human  foresight  there  was  nothing  but 
disaster    before    the    Greek.     Something 

105 


DID  DANIEL  \yRITE  DANIEL? 

else,  higher  than  human  foresight,  must 
have  revealed  the  divine  purpose  to  them. 
Daniel's  prophecy  was  their  source  of  in- 
formation. 

The  Magi. — The  visit  of  the  Wise  Mtn 
to  the  infant  Saviour  finds  its  easiest  ex- 
planation in  the  transmission  of  Daniel's 
prophecy  of  the  Seventy  Weeks,  through 
their  learned  guild.  Tacitus  and  Sueto- 
nius, the  Roman  historians,  speaking  of 
the  time  about  the  beginning  of  the  Chris- 
tian era,  say  that  there  prevailed  in  the 
East  an  expectation  that  a  great  ruler 
would  appear  in  Judea.  If  Daniel  himself 
was  one  of  the  Wise  ^len,  and  spoke  in 
Babylon,  as  his  book  declares,  then  this 
expectation  of  which  Tacitus  speaks  and 
the  visit  of  the  ]\Iagi  are  readily  accounted 
for.  Daniel  had  said  that  when  seventy 
sevens,  after  a  certain  royal  decree,  had 
passed,  Alessiah  the  Prince  should  appear. 
Familiar  with  the  archives  of  Babylon,  the 
Wise  ]\len  knew  when  that  decree  was  is- 
sued. The  four  hundred  and  ninety  years 
were  about  expiring.    The  Magi  were  on 

1 06 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  watch,  and  some  celestial  phenomenon 
— a  "star" — indicated  that  the  Prince  was 
born,  and  prompted  their  journey, 

A  prophecy  originating  in  Judea  in  the 
times  of  the  Maccabees  would  not  have 
impressed  the  AMse  IMen  of  Babylon,  es- 
pecially as  its  spurious  character  would 
be  apparent  to  them,  but  a  prophecy  in 
Babylon,  by  a  high  dignitary  of  the  Baby- 
lonian or  Persian  Courts  and  withal  a 
member  of  their  guild,  would  be  esteemed. 

This  incident  of  the  Magi  does  not,  of 
course,  disprove  the  hypothesis  of  the 
Maccabean  origin  of  Daniel,  but  it  is  more 
consistent  w^ith  the  view  of  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  book. 

Nehiichadnezzar's  Madness. — A  very 
remarkable  corroboration  of  Daniel  is 
given  in  the  standard  inscription  of  Neb- 
uchadnezzar found  in  the  debris  of  the 
temple  of  Belus.  Daniel  mentions  the 
temporary  insanity  of  Nebuchadnezzar 
which  lasted  seven  "times" — presumably 
seven  years.  No  secular  historian  speaks 
of  this.   The  reason  is  obvious.  The  King 

107 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

recovered  and  lived  to  modify  the  public 
records  at  his  own  pleasure.  No  court 
historiographer  would  care  to  risk  the 
King's  favor  by  mention  of  the  mental 
aberration.  But  the  King  upon  regaining 
his  mental  balance  must  have  perceived 
that  something  had  occurred.  Matters 
were  not  in  the  same  condition  as  when 
he  lost  his  reason.  Some  years  had 
passed ;  how  many  he  did  not  know.  They 
who  informed  him  would  shorten  the  time 
and  refer  as  gently  as  possible  to  his  afflic- 
tion. If  no  hint  at  all  of  the  King's  malady 
had  been  admitted  to  the  public  records, 
it  w^ould  not  descredit  Daniel's  statement, 
but  there  is  a  hint  and  more  than  a  hint — 
the  most  remarkable  statement  that  any 
king  ever  made  in  recording  his  achieve- 
ments. In  the  inscription,  Nebuchadnez- 
zar after  detailing  the  great  things  he  had 
done,  savs : 

"Four    years     *     *     *     ^^^    g^^^    ^f 

my  kingdom  in  the  city  *  *  *which 
*  *  *  did  not  rejoice  my  heart.  In 
all  my  dominions  I  did  not  build  a  high 

io8 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

place  of  power;  the  precious  treasures  of 
my  kingdom  I  did  not  lay  up.  In  Baby- 
lon, buildings  for  myself  and  for  the 
honor  of  my  kingdom  I  did  not  lay  out. 
In  the  worship  of  Merodach,  my  lord,  the 
joy  of  my  heart,  in  Babylon,  the  city  of 
his  sovereignty  and  the  seat  of  my  em- 
pire, I  did  not  sing  his  praises.  I  did  not 
furnish  his  altars,  nor  did  I  clear  the 
canals." 

Many  kings  have  told  what  they  did 
and,  generally,  without  minifying  their 
great  deeds.  This  King  records  what  he 
did  not  do.  He  speaks  from  his  grave 
of  2500  years  to  vindicate  the  man  whose 
wisdom  and  goodness  he  honored. 


109 


SUBJECTIVE   CONSIDERATIONS 

A  calm  consideration  of  the  arguments 
pro  and  contra  set  forth  in  the  preceding 
pages  can  bring  the  reader  to  but  one  con- 
clusion, viz.,  that  there  is  nothing  in  them 
to  disturb  the  genuineness  and  authen- 
ticity of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  much  to  confirm  it.  Many  of 
the  objections  are  so  trivial,  so  far- 
fetched, so  altogether  worthless,  that 
commentators  treat  them  with  contempt, 
feeling  that  to  discuss  them  is  to  dignify 
them ;  that  they  are  too  silly  to  merit  even 
a  denial.  And  some  of  the  objections, 
when  carefully  examined — especially  in 
the  light  of  the  discoveries  of  the  last 
sixty  years — turn  out  to  be  confirmations 
of  Daniel's  historicity. 

The  attestations  to  the  book — Alex- 
ander's treatment  of  the  Jews,  Nabonned's 
cylinders.  Nebuchadnezzar's  inscription, 
the  annalistic  tablet  of  Cyrus,  all  outside 


no 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

of  Scripture — are  remarkable.  No  other 
book  in  the  Old  Testament  carries  such 
attestation. 

How  then  does  it  come  to  pass  that 
many  scholars  struggle  assiduously,  at  the 
risk,  not  only  of  their  reputation  for  schol- 
arship, but  of  their  common  sense,  to  dis- 
place Daniel  from  its  place  in  Scripture? 

The  answer  is  found  in  the  subjective 
attitude  of  the  critics  themselves.  They 
have  made  themselves  believe  that  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  prophecy,  in  the 
sense  of  prediction.  If  the  Book  Daniel 
was  written  during  the  Babylonian  exile, 
it  foretold  many  things  which  came  to 
pass — many  things  which  human  sagacity 
could  not  possibly  foresee.  Therefore, 
they  infer  that  the  book  could  not  have 
been  written  in  the  exile. 

Furthermore,  they  are  convinced  that 
religious  development  must  proceed  in  a 
certain  way,  and  that  religious  literature 
will  express  this  development.  If  a  piece 
of  literature  precedes  the  time  at  which  it 
ought  to  appear,  it  could  not  so  have  ap- 

III 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

peared,  whatever  the  evidence  may  seem 
to  say. 

Let  us  examine  this  latter  subjective 
consideration  first. 

According  to  it,  apocalyptic  literature, 
like  the  Book  of  Daniel,  comes  late  in  the 
history  of  a  religious  movement.  Visions 
and  dreams,  angelic  ministration,  sym- 
bolic imagery,  terrific  convulsions  accom- 
panying the  vindication  of  the  truth  and 
the  overthrow  of  evil  as  the  end  of  the 
world  draws  nigh — these  appear  in  the 
writings  of  enthusiasts  after  the  prophet 
has  passed  away.  The  Prophet  deals  with 
the  elements  of  good  and  evil  which  he 
sees  around  him,  glancing  forward  now 
and  then  to  the  fruition  of  these  present 
germs  of  right  and  wrong.  In  the  mind 
of  the  Seer,  however,  the  grand  events  of 
the  future  fill  the  imagination  and  the 
present  takes  its  color  from  them.  The 
Books  of  Enoch  and  II  Esdras  are 
apocalyptic,  and  by  this  character  show 
that  they  were  composed  in  the  late  au- 
tumn of  Judaism  long  after  prophecy  had 

112 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

ceased  with  Malachi.  And  the  Shepherd 
of  Hernias  and  other  Christian  Apoc- 
alypses appear  only  after  the  tongues  and 
pens  of  Apostles  had  ceased  to  move.  The 
Book  Daniel  may  be  classed  with  such 
writings  as  those  above  mentioned  and 
must  be  dated  late  in  the  history  of  Juda- 
ism, not  earlier  than  163  B.  C* 

There  is  plausibility  in  this  theory,  and 
it  is  certainly  fascinating.  The  Books  of 
Enoch  and  II  Esdras  were  not  written 
earlier  than  150  B.C., possibly  not  till  after 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  Certain 
parts  of  Daniel  may  very  properly  be  con- 
sidered a  prototype  of  them,  that  is  to  say, 
the  authors  of  these  apocryphal  books  had 
read  Daniel.  But  this  does  not  bring  the 
composition  of  Daniel  one  day  nearer 
these  books.  And  the  whole  theory,  pleas- 
ing and  plausible  as  it  is,  breaks  down 
before  the  facts.  However  true  it  may  be 
that  enthusiasts  are  given  to  visions  and 
revelations,  born  of  nothing  but  their  own 


*Rev.  A.  M.  Hunter,  Age  of  Daniel,  p.  viii. 
113 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

excited  imaginations,  it  is  also  true  that 
Ezekiel  contains  more  visions  and  stran- 
ger imagery  than  Daniel.  Zechariah  is 
apocalyptic  in  the  same  way  and  Isaiah  in 
his  pictures  of  the  future  more  than  paral- 
lels Daniel.  I  know,  of  course,  that  the 
inventors  of  this  theory  post-date  all  the 
parts  of  Isaiah  that  disprove  their  scheme, 
but  they  have  not  yet  ventured  to  bring 
Isaiah  down  to  163  B.  C. 

^Moreover,  if  the  Apocalypse  of  the  New- 
Testament  ^^■as  written  by  St.  John  or  in 
the  days  of  the  Apostles,  it  shatters  the 
theory.  And  finally,  our  Lord's  own  pre- 
diction of  the  last  days  (Matt,  xxiv,  xxv) 
reduces  the  theory  to  nothing  at  all. 
Dreams,  visions,  symbolic  imagery,  pic- 
tures of  future  judgments  have  no  fixed 
chronologic  order  in  the  history  of  re- 
ligious movements.  They  may  manifest 
themselves  at  any  time,  but  if  we  may 
judge  by  modern  instances  of  phenomena, 
thev  mark  the  vouth  and  not  the  ag^e  of 
religious  movements.  Islam  had  its 
dreams   in   its   founder   ^lahomet.      The 

114 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  was 
marked  by  such  phenomena  on  the  part 
of  numerous  enthusiasts.  The  theory  it- 
self is  a  dream. 

Prediction  Impossible. 

The  other  subjective  consideration  is 
that  prediction  beyond  a  very  hmited  de- 
gree is  beyond  the  power  of  man,  and 
that,  therefore,  the  predictions  in  Daniel 
were  not  predictions  at  all,  but  were  made 
after  the  events.  The  history  prior  to  the 
death  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  it  is  said, 
is  given  with  considerable  particularity, 
and  is  so  given  because  it  was  past  his- 
tory; but  the  occurrences  after  that  date 
are  but  indefinite  yearnings  for  some  re- 
mote good.  If  they  happened  to  be  ful- 
filled, it  was  an  accident.  'Tdeas  and 
terms  appear,  it  is  true,  in  connection  wath 
these  visions  of  Daniel  which  happily  il- 
lustrated thoughts  held  by  the  writers  of 
the  New  Testament  concerning  Christ  and 
the  fate  of  Jerusalem  under  the  Romans. 
These,  however,  were  not  in  the  mind  of 

115 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  original  writer.  They  are  an  apphca- 
tion,  but  not  the  original  intention  of  the 
words  of  Daniel."* 

The  critic  in  the  sentence  just  quoted 
refers  to  the  words  of  our  Lord  foretelling 
the  fate  of  Jerusalem.  ''When  ye  see  the 
abomination  of  desolation,  spoken  of  by 
Daniel  the  prophet"  (Matt,  xxiv,  15; 
Mark  xiii,  14),  and  the  insinuation  is 
conveyed  that  our  Lord  did  not  say  these 
words,  but  that  the  Evangelists,  seeing 
their  applicability  to  the  fate  of  Jerusalem, 
put  them  into  his  mouth.  This  is  to  im- 
pugn the  Evangelists,  for  they  give  these 
words  as  the  words  of  Christ.  Moreover, 
since  the  Evangelists  wrote  before  the  fall 
of  Jerusalem,  Daniel's  prophecy  still  re- 
mains a  prediction,  and  the  "writers  of 
the  New  Testament"  did  not  fit  the  pre- 
diction to  the  fact  aftn'  the  event.  And 
so  we  have  a  second  insinuation,  viz.,  that 
the  Gospels  were  written  after  the  Holy 
Citv  fell. 


*Prof.  Curtis,  Philadelphia  Bulletin. 
116 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

These  insinuations  are  serious  for 
Christian  men  to  make^  and  the  first  is 
revolting  to  reverent  feehng.  But  the 
theory  that  prediction  is  impossible  com- 
pels them. 

As  for  the  theory.  Prediction  like  Dan- 
iel's is,  of  course,  beyond  the  ability  of 
man,  but  it  is  not  beyond  the  ability  of 
God.  For  His  own  wise  purposes  He 
may  uncover  the  future  to  the  gaze  of 
His  children.  To  say  that  He  cannot  com- 
municate His  knowledge  to  men  is  to  re- 
duce Him  to  a  level  below  His  own  crea- 
tures, for  men  can  communicate  their 
knowledge  to  men.  And  to  say  that  He 
will  not,  is  to  say  that  He  will  not  do  what 
every  earthly  father  does  in  forecasting 
the  future  for  his  son  and  forewarning 
him  of  the  perils  and  besetments  which 
the  child  will  encounter.  Any  conception 
of  God  short  of  an  inane  Pantheism  pro- 
tests against  a  dictum  so  preposterous. 

But  here  w^e  touch  the  fount  and  origin 
of  the  whole  assault  upon  Daniel.  It  is 
objection  to 

117 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

The  Supernatural. 

The  prophecies  and  miracles  are  dis- 
tasteful. This  is  frankly  avowed  by  some 
of  the  critics.  "Whatever  is  supernatural 
is  not  historical."  Of  course,  with  a  rule 
like  this,  all  the  books  of  the  Bible  cease 
to  be  in  any  special  manner  revelations 
from  God,  and  it  matters  little  what  their 
dates  may  be. 

But  why  should  not  God  give  a  revela- 
tion ?  Is  there  not  a  need  ?  Man  is  stag- 
gering on  in  much  weakness  and  ignor- 
ance; wuth  temptations  assailing  him, 
temptations  which  he  knows  he  ought  to 
resist,  but  which  he  does  not  resist.  He 
feels  that  he  is  created  for  a  purpose,  but 
what  is  the  purpose  ?  Has  he  any  destiny 
except  to  eat  and  drink  and  die  like  the 
brute?  Is  there  a  life  beyond  this  one? 
He  studies,  he  reasons,  he  hopes,  he  stands 
over  the  graves  of  those  who  have  gone 
and  strives  to  interrogate  the  dead.  And 
if  there  be  another  life,  does  his  condition 
there  depend  upon  his  conduct  here?  He 
is  in  the  dark ;  he  does  not  know  the  way. 

ii8 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

He  is  as  a  child  left  alone  in  the  forest 
without  lantern  or  chart,  and  yet  with 
forebodings  if  he  miss  the  path.  He  looks 
up  to  God  and  cries,  "Oh,  that  I  knew 
where  I  might  find  Him!'' 

God  knows.  He  knows  what  man  is 
created  for.  He  knows  the  perils  if  the 
way  is  missed.  Is  it  unreasonable  that  He 
should  tell  His  child?  Will  He  withhold 
the  knowledge  without  which  man  must 
miss  his  destiny?  Ought  He  not,  we  say 
it  reverently,  ought  He  not  tell  us  ? 

He  has.  All  along  from  the  first  there 
has  been  a  Revelation.  He  spake  unto  the 
fathers  by  the  prophets,  at  sundry  times, 
in  divers  manners ;  and  at  last  by  His  be- 
loved Son.  A  Revelation  is  not  unreas- 
onable; it  would  be  unreasonable  if  there 
were  no  Revelation. 

And  if  there  be  a  Revelation,  is  it  im- 
proper that  God  should  give  a  token  by 
which  men  should  know  it?  St.  Peter 
says  we  have  the  more  sure  word  of 
prophecy;  he  evidently  thought  there  was 
nothing  out  of  the  way  in   God  giving 

119 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

some  attestation  to  His  Revelation.  How 
are  we  to  know  the  Divine  Revelation  un- 
less something  supernatural  accompanies 
it?  Prophecy  is  such  an  attestation,  for 
God  alone  knows  the  future.  It  is  the 
"more  sure  word"  on  which  we  may  de- 
pend. Joseph  Smith  pretends  to  have  a 
revelation ;  so  does  Mahomet,  but  neither 
of  them  gives  any  supernatural  sign.  We 
decline  receiving  such  pretended  revela- 
tions ;  they  carry  no  supernatural  token  to 
warrant  them.  But  when  God  spoke  by 
His  prophets  He  attested  their  mission. 
He  had  the  power  to  give  a  token  and  man 
had  the  right  to  expect  it. 

*'What  sign  showest  thou?"  was  not  an 
unreasonable  demand.  Our  Saviour  con- 
cedes its  justness.  ''Believe  me,"  He  says, 
"for  the  works'  sake."  The  miracle  is  the 
token  to  the  eye-witnesses;  the  prophecy 
is  the  token  to  all  generations.  What  finer 
evidence  can  there  be  of  Divine  interposi- 
tion than  prophecy?  The  miracle  may  be 
simulated.  Impostors  may  cheat  men's 
eyes  and  ears ;  but  prophecy  accomplished 

1 20 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

long  after  the  prophet  has  gone  from 
earth  is  sure.  Cruel  and  foolish  is  that 
ingenuity  which  perverts  God's  gracious 
gift  and  denies  Him  the  power  or  will 
to  help  us. 


121 


THE  PROPHECIES 

These  will  be  examined  only  so  far  as 
they  bear  upon  the  subject  of  this  essay, 
viz.,  the  date  of  the  Book  of  Daniel.  Ac- 
cording to  the  impug-ners  of  the  book, 
these  prophecies  all  center  in  a  Syrian 
King,  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  Antiochus 
the  Illustrious.  He  was  illustrious  only 
as  the  foe  of  the  Jewish  faith  in  the  sec- 
ond century  before  Christ.  He  is  being 
pushed  to  a  bad  eminence  against  the 
truth  to-day. 

Suppose  it  true — which  it  is  not — that 
the  prophecies  terminate  in  this  vile  man, 
how  does  that  prove  that  the  prophecies 
were  not  written  at  the  time  the  evidence 
sliows  them  to  have  been  written? 

There  was  coming  upon  the  Jewish  peo- 
ple a  trial  which  threatened  to  extirpate 
true  religion  from  the  earth.  There  was 
danger  that  all  the  Jews  would  be  swept 
into  Greek  idolatry.  The  danger  was  real, 

122 


DID  DANIEI.  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

as   is   evidenced   by   the   fact   that  great 
numbers  of  them  did  become  thoroughly 
Hellenized.   Greek  manners  and  Greek  re- 
hgion  became  popular  even  in  Jerusalem. 
To  hold  them  firm  in  their  ancient  faith, 
they    were    forewarned :    the    oppression 
would  not  last  forever.     God  was  in  the 
heavens  watching  their  actions.    He  knew 
all  that  should  befall  them,  and  He  tells 
them  particularly  and  specifically  of  that 
crisis  in  their  history.     They  needed  sup- 
port for  that  special  time  of  distress,  and 
that  is  the  time  which  is  sketched  so  ac- 
curately in  Dan.  xi.    There  never  has  been 
a  time  since  in  w^hich  the  Jews  were  in 
danger  of  letting  go  their  religion.     The 
warning  was  specific.    What  its  effect  was 
we  know.    The  faithful  sons  of  Abraham 
stood   by   their   faith   and   preserved   re- 
lisfion.       Forewarned     was     forearmed. 
Without  that  prophecy  to  encourage  them 
it  had  been  madness  to  enter  upon  the 
struggle  against  the  Syrian  tyrant.     If 
they  had  not  made  that  struggle,  gross 
idolatry  would  have  been  everywhere  tri- 

123 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

umphant,  and  not  a  spot  would  have  been 
left  upon  the  earth  where  the  one  God  was 
worshipped.  The  occasion  justified  the 
prophec}^,  if  justification  is  needed.  But 
significant  and  critical  as  was  that  occa- 
sion, there  is  more  in  Daniel  than  the 
Syrian  oppressor. 

The  Image. — The  first  prophecy  (Dan. 
ii)  is  of  four  world  kingdoms,  represented 
by  the  head  of  gold,  the  breast  and  arms 
of  silver,  the  belly  and  thighs  of  brass,  the 
legs  of  iron,  the  feet  of  iron  and  clay.  A 
stone  cut  out  without  hands  was  to  smite 
the  image  and  the  God  of  heaven  was  to 
set  up  a  kingdom  which  should  never  be 
destroyed,  but  stand  for  ever  and  ever. 

There  have  been  four  world  kingdoms 
with  which  the  Jews  had  to  do,  and  only 
four.  Since  the  Roman  empire  there  have 
been  no  world  kingdoms.  A  kingdom, 
not  earthly,  but  heavenly,  has  been  set  up 
by  the  God  of  Heaven  and  it  will  never  be 
destroyed.  What  this  eternal  kingdom  is 
ever3^body  knows.  \\^  find  the  powers, 
symbolized  by  the  feet  of  clay  and  iron — 

124 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

partly  strong  and  partly  weak — in  the 
nations  which  have  succeeded  the  Roman 
empire.  Weak  and  strong,  they  have 
lived  side  by  side  ever  since,  but  world- 
wide powers  are  no  more,  except  the 
Church  of  God. 

The  Four  Beasts. — In  Chapter  vii  we 
have  the  four  world  powers  again,  now 
more  definitely  described,  under  figures  of 
beasts,  the  lion,  the  bear,  the  leopard  and 
a  beast  diverse  from  all  the  rest.  The 
lion  was  the  Babylonian  empire.  The 
bear  was  the  Persian  empire;  it  was 
Medo-Persian  at  the  outset,  but  it  raised 
itself  on  one  side,  the  Persian  element 
dominated.  The  leopard  was  the  Greek 
empire;  it  had  four  wings;  it  was  swift; 
under  Alexander  it  conquered  the  world 
in  less  than  twelve  years ;  it  had  four 
heads ;  upon  the  death  of  Alexander  it 
was  divided  into  four  parts  under  the  rule 
of  his  generals.  It  was  the  only  empire 
thus  divided. 

The  fourth  beast  was  dreadful,  diverse 
from  the  others,  its  teeth  of  iron,  its  nails 

125 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

of  brass,  which  devoured,  brake  in  pieces 
and  stamped  the  residue  with  his  feet. 
The  Roman  empire  differed  from  the 
other  kingdoms.  It  was  not  a  monarchy 
when  it  extended  its  power  over  Asia;  it 
was  a  republic.  Its  iron  teeth  tore  in 
pieces  wherever  the  iron  legs  of  Chapter 
ii  strode.  Its  power  passes  on  to  ten 
Kings,  who  succeed — or  rather  who  spring 
out  of  it — its  unity  gone,  it  is  a  mixture  of 
iron  and  clay. 

A  new  feature  is  added  in  this  vision, 
x^m-ong  these  ten  Kings  there  starts  up 
another  King  diverse  from  the  ten ;  he  had 
eyes  and  a  mouth  speaking  great  things; 
that  is,  he  is  shrewd,  cunning  and  boast- 
ful ;  his  power  not  residing  in  force  appar- 
ently, but  in  some  moral  mastership. 

Here,  as  in  the  symbol  of  the  Image, 
the  four  great  powers  pass  away.  One 
like  the  Son  of  ]\Ian  comes  and  there  is 
given  him  a  kingdom  which  shall  not  be 
destroyed.  This  everlasting  kingdom 
does  not  appear  to  be  reared  upon  the 
ruins  of  the  ten  Kings,  but  to  be  in  part 

126 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

contemporary  with  them  and  with  the 
'''little  horn" — the  King  diverse  from  the 
others. 

Who  or  what  this  little  horn  is,  it  is  not 
our  purpose  now  to  inquire.  It  is  easy  to 
see  what  it  is  not.  It  is  not  Antiochus 
Epiphanes.  He  did  not  spring  out  of  the 
decay  of  the  Roman  empire.  He  was  not 
diverse  from  other  Kings,  but  was  a  brutal 
wretch  like  hundreds  of  other  Kings  before 
and  after  him,  and  he  was  not  contem- 
porary with  the  coming  of  the  Son  of 
Man  nor  with  the  setting  up  of  the  king- 
dom which  should  never  be  destroyed. 
Whoever  the  little  horn  of  Chapter  vii 
was,  or  is^  or  is  to  be — for  interpreters 
vary  regarding  him — he  did  not  appear 
till  the  fourth  beast,  the  Roman  empire 
had  been  established  and  was  moving  to 
decay. 

But  those  who  seek  to  displace  Daniel 
must  make  this  little  horn  Antiochus. 
They  are  at  their  wits'  end  to  do  it,  but  it 
must  be  done.  And  for  this  purpose  they 
must  get  the  four  world  powers  prior  to 

127 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

163  B.  C.  The  Roman  empire,  the  great- 
est of  them  all,  must  be  eliminated.  Vari- 
ous are  the  shifts  resorted  to  in  this  en- 
deavor. One  man  suggests  the  x\ssyrian 
empire  as  the  firsts  and  then  come  the 
Bab}donian,  the  Persian  and  the  Greek. 
But  "thou,  O  Nebuchadnezzar,  art  this 
head  of  gold,"  spoils  that  hypothesis.  The 
four  empires  must  begin  with  the  King  of 
Babylon.  Another  proposes,  i,  the  Baby- 
lonian ;  2,  the  Median ;  3,  the  Persian ;  4, 
the  Greek.  But  there  was  no  ]\Iedian 
world  empire.  The  Median  was  merged 
with  the  Persian  and  presently  submerged 
by  it.  A  third  happy  hit  is  this— i,  Baby- 
lonian; 2,  Persian;  3,  Greek;  4,  the 
Syrian;  i.e.,  one  of  the  four  parts  into 
which  Alexander's  Greek  empire  was  di- 
vided. But  the  Syrian  was  no  world 
power.  Only  as  a  member  of  the  Greek 
period  had  it  any  standing.  This  ex- 
hausts the  hypotheses  up  to  the  present 
writing,  and  all  are  untenable. 

But  is  not  Antiochus  Epiphanes  in  Dan- 
iel?    Yes,  we  find  him,  I  think,  in  the 

128 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

next  vision,  Dan.  viii,  and  in  his  proper 
place  chronologically. 

Ram  and  Hc-goaf. — This  vision  Is  not 
of  four  beasts,  but  of  two,  and  the  em- 
pires are  named.  There  is  a  ram  with 
two  horns,  one  horn  higher  than  the  other 
and  the  higher  came  up  last.  This  re- 
minds us  of  the  bear  (Dan.  vii,  4)  Medo- 
Persia.  A  he-goat  with  a  notable  horn 
between  his  eyes  came  swiftly  from  the 
West  and  smote  the  ram.  The  he-goat 
waxed  strong;  but  presently  the  notable 
horn  was  broken,  and  in  its  place  four 
horns  came.  The  early  death  of  Alex- 
ander, and  the  assignment  of  the  empire 
to  his  four  generals  are  plain  here. 

It  is  to  be  noted  in  passing  that  there 
are  not  three  beasts  but  two.  The  he-goat 
is  one  empire,  whether  he  has  one  horn  or 
four.  This  disposes  of  that  hypothesis, 
mentioned  in  a  previous  page,  which  tries 
to  make  two  empires  out  of  the  Greek 
domination. 

The  vision  goes  on.  Out  of  one  of  the 
four  horns  in  the  latter  time  of  their  king- 

129 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

dom  there  came  forth  a  Httle  horn  which 
waxed  great  toward  the  East,  South  and 
the  pleasant  land.  The  pleasant  land  was 
Palestine,  and  this  little  horn  was  Antio- 
chus  in  all  probability.  At  all  events,  he 
fits  in  here  exactly.  He  is  not  said  to  be 
diverse  from  other  kings,  nor  is  he  put 
four  or  live  hundred  years  after  his  death. 
By  him,  it  is  said,  the  daily  sacrifice  shall 
be  taken  away  and  the  sanctuary  trodden 
under  foot.  This  is  true  of  Antiochus, 
wdio  defiled  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  and 
sacrificed  swine  in  the  holy  place. 

Chapter  xi  is  an  expansion  of  this 
vision.  Therein  the  movements  of  the 
Ptolemies  of  Eg}'pt  and  the  Seleucidae  of 
Syria  are  given  briefl}^,  and  the  trials 
which  were  to  befall  the  Jews  set  forth. 
Antiochus  Epiphanes,  the  greatest  perse- 
cutor of  all,  is  among  them. 

Here  then  are  two  sets  of  prophecies. 
The  first  set  (Chapters  ii  and  vii)  takes, 
in  a  wide  sweep,  the  history  of  the  world, 
so  far  as  it  touched  the  chosen  people, 
until  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  and 

130 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  setting  up  of  the  Kingdom  which  shall 
never  be  destroyed. 

The  second  set  of  prophecies  (Chap- 
ters viii  and  xi)  is  strictly  limited  in 
time,  and  carries  the  story  through  the 
Maccabean  struggle  for  the  preservation 
of  the  Jewish  faith. 

The  first  set  reaches  to  the  setting  up 
of  the  Church  of  Christ,  and  possibly  to 
the  second  advent  of  the  Redeemer.  The 
second  set  reaches  to  the  great  crisis  in 
the  history  of  Judaism  and,  upon  its  sur- 
face at  least,  no  further. 

Many  fanciful  interpretations  have 
been  constructed  upon  this  second  set  of 
prophecies.  Interpreters  have  seen  there- 
in the  Russian  and  the  Turkish  powers 
and  some  even  the  United  States.  What 
secondary  adumbrations  may  be  concealed 
in  the  figures  and  symbols  it  is  not  the 
purpose  of  this  essay  to  discuss.  The 
plain  and  obvious  reference  of  the  second 
set  of  prophecies  (Chapters  viii  and  xi) 
is  to  the  history  down  to  Antiochus.  The 
reason  for  this  definiteness  is  recognized 

131 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

by  all.  It  was  to  encourage  the  Jews  in 
resistance  to  the  tyranny  which  sought  to 
destroy  the  worship  of  God.  As  a  pro- 
phecy, written  long  before,  it  would  have 
that  effect.  The  critic  admits  this,  but, 
being  unwilling  to  admit  predictive  pro- 
phecy, he  claims  that  this  must  have  been 
written  at  the  close  of  Antiochus'  reign  to 
encourage  the  Jews  to  what  further  efforts 
might  be  necessary.  It  is  his  objection  to 
the  supernatural,  viz.,  prediction,  which  is 
the  animus  of  his  theory.  He  argues  that 
a  document  which  treats  of  some  events 
with  comparative  precision,  and  of  other 
events  in  a  general  way,  must  have  been 
written  after  the  events  definitely  spoken 
of,  and  that  the  other  predictions  are  not 
predictions  at  all,  but  only  vague  yearn- 
ings. 

Apply  this  theory  to  our  Lord's  words 
in  Matt,  xxiv,  xxv,  and  its  parallels. 
Therein  are  specific  predictions  concern- 
ing the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  the  siege 
of  the  city,  the  circumvallation,  the  fright- 
ful slaughter,  the  ruin  of  the  temple,  the 

132 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

eagles  gathered  together,  and  there  are 
also  forecasts  of  the  end  of  the  world  in 
general;  therefore,  according  to  the  the- 
ory, there  was  no  prediction  at  all  con- 
cerning Jerusalem  and  the  other  forecasts 
are  vague  guesses. 

The  critic  who  retains  his  faith  in 
Christ  will  shrink  from  such  an  issue  as 
this.  It  destroys  the  Gospels  as  faithful 
records,  and  resolves  the  historic  Christ 
into  a  mvth.  Still  there  are  critics  who 
do  not  shrink  even  from  this  issue.  They 
loudly  assert  their  eagerness  for  the 
truth,  and  proclaim  their  heroic  willing- 
ness to  accept  results,  whatever  they  may 
be. 

This  essay  is  reaching  for  the  truth  as 
much  as  any  writings  of  the  critics,  and  it 
asserts  that  no  evidence  has  been  adduced 
to  displace  the  Book  of  Daniel  from  its 
place  in  the  exile ;  that,  on  the  contrary, 
all  the  evidence,  archaeological,  historical, 
philological.  Scriptural  and,  we  may  add, 
sensible  and  sane,  sustains  the  view  which 
Jews  and  Christians  have  held  through 

133 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

the  ages.  The  critic's  one  and  only  argu- 
ment is  a  theory  and  his  search,  which  is 
admitted  to  be  eager,  industrious,  venture- 
some and  patient,  is  a  search  only  for 
something  to  sustain  the  theory. 

This  essay  admits  that  a  useful  theory 
may  be  formed  in  advance  of  facts  and 
that  then  the  facts  to  sustain  it  may  be 
looked  for,  but  it  maintains  that  when  the 
facts  discovered  do  not  sustain  the  theory, 
but  contradict  it,  then  the  theory  is  not 
useful,  but  mischievous  and  deluding. 

The  physicist  tries  theory  after  theory 
in  his  -domain,  \\lien  the  facts  do  not 
sustain  the  theory,  he  discards  it,  how- 
ever disappointing  it  may  be  to  his  expec- 
tations, or  mortifying  to  his  pride.  Can- 
not literary  critics  be  as  virtuous? 

The  Seventy  Weeks. — The  question 
may  be  asked :  why  should  God  concern 
Himself  with  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations, 
the  birth,  growth,  decay  and  death  of  em- 
pires, which  are  but  ephemeral  phenomena 
when  compared  with  His  eternal  years? 
We  may  answer :  that  He  who  notes  a 

134 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

sparrow's  fall  cannot  be  supposed  indif- 
ferent to  the  fortunes  of  His  intelligent 
creatures.  Babylonian,  Persian,  Greek  or 
Hebrew,  they  are  all  His  creatures, 
though  some  have  been  indifferent  .  to 
Him. 

But  the  further  question  may  be  asked : 
why  should  He  depart  from  His  ordinary 
methods  and  reveal  beforehand  the  for- 
tunes of  some?  The  answer  to  this  is: 
that  whenever  He  has  done  so  it  is  for  a 
purpose,  a  sufficient  purpose.  The  preser- 
vation of  the  Hebrew's  faith — the  only 
monotheism  then  existing — justifies  the 
revelation  to  the  remnant  of  Israel  of  the 
crisis  which  was  impending,  in  which  a 
cruel,  exulting  and  relentless  paganism 
was  aiming  to  crush  true  religion  for- 
ever. When  that  crisis  came  under  An- 
tiochus  Epiphanes,  although  many  of  the 
Jewish  remnant  yielded  and  abandoned 
Jehovah  for  Diana  and  the  heathen  Pan- 
theon, yet  a  remnant  of  the  remnant  stood 
firm,  sustained  amid  the  gathering  gloom 
by  the  prophecy  which  had  been  given. 

135 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

The  other  prophecy  of  the  Four  Em- 
pires has  served  through  two  thousand 
years  a  grander  purpose,  and  "the  King- 
dom which  shall  never  be  destroyed"  has 
cheered,  consoled  and  strengthened  my- 
riads of  suffering  saints  through  floods  of 
bitter  persecution  and  arid  years  of  world- 
liness.  The  critic  will  admit  this,  al- 
though he  says  that  all  along,  the  prophecy 
has  been  misunderstood.  The  preserva- 
tion of  the  Jewish  faith  in  its  time  of 
stress  and  trial  and  the  preservation  of  the 
Christian  faith  in  the  dark  days  which 
have  come  upon  it  are  a  sufficient  justifi- 
cation for  the  revelation.  In  the  opinion 
of  many  wise  and  godly  men  this  latter 
purpose  is  not  finished  yet.  Times  of 
trial  are  coming  in  which  men  shall  say, 
"Lo,  Christ  is  here!  or  there!"  and  shall 
deceive,  if  it  were  possible,  even  the  elect. 

The  testimony  of  Jesus  is  the  spirit  of 
prophecy.  Wq  have  seen  Him  in  the  Son 
of  Man  of  Dan.  vii,  13.  We  shall  see 
Him  again  in  the  prophecy  of  Dan.  ix, 
24-27,  the  Seventy  Weeks. 

136 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Messiah  is  the  center  of  human  history. 
Upon  Him  and  His  work,  foreordained 
from  the  beginning,  rest  the  hopes  of  Jew 
and  Gentile.  In  the  fuhiess  of  time  He 
was  to  appear,  through  the  channel  of  the 
Hebrew  race,  and  make  reconciliation  for 
man.  He  was  expected  by  the  Jewish 
people.  Isaiah  had  foretold  a  triumphant 
Conqueror  and  withal  a  suffering  Servant. 
Jeremiah  had  promised,  ''the  Branch,  Je- 
hovah our  Righteousness"  (Jer.  xxiii,  5, 
6),  and  the  post-exilic  prophets  carried  on 
the  tidings.  No  doubt  the  Jewish  doctors 
were  perplexed  at  what  must  have  seemed 
contradictory  characteristics  in  the  Com- 
ing One.  How  could  He  be  born  in  Beth- 
lehem whose  goings  forth  have  been  from 
everlasting,  as  Micah  had  declared?  (Mic. 
V,  2.)  How  could  the  sword  awake 
against  a  Man  who  was  God's  equal,  as 
said  Zechariah?  (Zech.  xiii,  7.)  How 
could  the  W^onderful,  the  Counsellor,  the 
Mighty  God  be  despised  and  rejected  of 
men,  and  be  brought  as  a  lamb  to  the 
slaughter?     (Is.  ix,  6,  liii.)     We  cannot 

137 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

wonder  at  their  wonderment  concerning 
the  Wonderful.  They  did  not  compre- 
hend the  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God. 
How  could  they?  The  prophets  them- 
selves must  have  been  amazed^  searching 
what  the  Spirit  did  signify  when  it  testi- 
fied beforehand  the  sufferings  and  the 
glory  of  Christ.     (I  Pet.  i,  ii.) 

It  is  tliis  Messiah  of  whom  Daniel 
writes  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  his  pro- 
phecy. Jerusalem  lay  in  ruins  during  the 
exile.  Under  Cyrus,  the  exile  ended  and 
the  Jews  began  their  return  to  Palestine. 
They  did  not  return  in  a  body,  but  in  de- 
tachments, and  at  considerable  intervals, 
and  all  did  not  return.  We  are  surprised 
at  the  paucity  in  numbers  of  the  returning 
bands.  Only  those  most  heroic  and  most 
inspired  with  religious  zeal  ventured  to 
return.  Various  reasons  suggest  them- 
selves: the  difficulties  of  the  journey  and 
the  hardships  to  be  encountered  in  rehabil- 
itating desolated  Judea.  But  these  can 
hardly  explain  the  timidity  of  the  mass  of 
exiles   which  kept  them  away   from   the 

138 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

land  they  loved,  and  in  an  idolatrous  coun- 
try where  they  were  subjected  to  insult 
and  outrage.  If,  however,  they  knew  of 
Daniel's  prophecies,  and  had  therein  read 
of  the  troubles  impending  over  Judea,  we 
can  understand  their  faint-heartedness. 

Included  in  the  prophecy  of  the  Seventy 
^^'eeks  is  the  specific  prediction  that  from 
the  going  forth  of  a  commandment  to  re- 
store and  build  Jerusalem  unto  Messiah 
the  Prince,  there  would  be  sixty-nine 
weeks.  Those  weeks  are  weeks  of  years. 
After  four  hundred  and  eighty-three  years 
Messiah  was  to  come.* 

Was  this  prophecy  fulfilled?  Was 
there  a  commandment  to  restore  and  build 
Jerusalem?  And  483  years  after,  did  a 
Personage,  Messiah  the  Prince,  appear? 

There  were  four  decrees  concerning 
Jerusalem  issued  by  the  Persian  Court. 


*The  word  translated  "weeks"  means  sevens. 
If  sevens  of  days  were  meant  the  word  "days" 
would  have  been  appended.  "Seventy  sevens" 
means  four  hundred  and  ninety  periods ;  probably 
years  of  some  kind. 

139 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

The  first  is  by  Cyrus,  536  B.  C.  (Ezra 
i,  1-4;  II  Chron.  xxvi,  22-23).  This  au- 
thorizes the  restoration  of  the  Temple. 
There  is  nothing  in  it  about  building  Jeru- 
salem, and  as  we  learn  afterward  the  city 
was  not  built. 

The  next  decree  is  that  of  Darius  Hys- 
taspis  (Ezra  vi).  It,  too  concerns  the 
Temple,  its  finishing  and  furnishing. 
"And  the  house  was  finished  in  the  sixth 
year  of  Darius,  the  King."  There  is  noth- 
ing in  this  decree  about  building  Jeru- 
salem. 

The  next  decree  is  in  the  seventh  year 
of  Artaxerxes  (Ezra  vii,  12-26),  which 
authorizes  contributions  for  the  service  of 
the  Temple  by  any  well-disposed  people 
and  directs  that  what  is  lacking  for  this 
service  be  made  up  from  the  King's  treas- 
ury. There  is  nothing  in  this  decree  about 
building  Jerusalem. 

The  next  decree  is  referred  to  in  Neh. 
ii.  It  was  in  the  twentieth  year  of  Ar- 
taxerxes. The  words  of  the  decree  are 
not  given,  but  its  subject  matter  can  easily 

140 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

be  determined.  Nehemiah  hears  of  the 
desolate  condition  of  Jerusalem.  He  is 
deeply  grieved.  The  King  asks  the  rea- 
son. Nehemiah  replies  "the  city,  the  place 
of  my  fathers'  sepulchres  lieth  waste  and 
the  gates  thereof  are  consumed  with  fire." 
The  King  bids  him  make  request.  He 
does  so  promptly,  asking  an  order  from 
the  King  that  'T  be  sent  to  the  city  that  I 
may  build  it."  And,  as  we  read,  he  was 
sent,  and  he  rebuilt  Jerusalem. 

This  decree  then  is  the  ''commandment 
to  restore  and  rebuild  Jerusalem."  There 
is  no  other  decree  authorizing  the  restora- 
tion of  the  city.  This  decree  authorizes 
the  restoration  and  the  book  of  Nehemiah 
tells  how  the  work  was  carried  on.  The 
exigencies  of  their  various  theories  have 
led  men  to  take  some  other  decree  for  the 
terminus  a  quo  of  their  calculations,  but 
it  is  not  apparent  how  any  could  have  done 
so  without  misgivings.  This  decree  of 
Neh.  ii  is  the  commandment  to  restore  and 
rebuild  Jerusalem ;  no  other  decree  gives 
any  permission  to  restore  the  city.     All 

141 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

other  decrees  refer  to  the  building  of  the 
temple  and  the  temple  only. 

It  is  true^  as  we  read  in  Ezra  iv,  that  the 
Samaritan  neighbors  of  the  Jews  sent 
word  to  the  Persian"  King  at  Babylon  that 
the  Jews  were  building  the  city  wall,  and 
by  this  means  arrested  work  on  the  temple 
for  several  years.  But  if  the  Jews  were 
working  on  the  walls,  they  were  doing  so 
without  permission.  It  is  more  probable, 
however,  that  the  Samaritans  lied. 

^^^hat  now  is  the  date  of  the  decree  of 
the  20th  year  of  Artaxerxes  ? 

Hengstenberg  in  an  elaborate  calcula- 
tion (Christology  ii,  394)  makes  it  454 
B.  C.  Other  chronologists  make  the  date 
later,  the  latest  date  being  445  B.  C.  Pres- 
ent opinion  prefers  this  latest  date.  Tak- 
ing any  of  the  dates  assigned  to  20th  Ar- 
taxerxes, 69  weeks  or  483  years  there- 
from bring  us  to  Alessiah,  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth. 

Some  designed  obscurity  seems  to  be 
involved  in  these  years.  Our  Lord's  cau- 
tion,   "whoso    readeth,    let    him    under- 

142 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

stand,"  Matt,  xxivj  15,  intimates  as  much. 
They  are  called  ''sevens/'  not  "years." 
Are  they  years  at  all?  Or  if  they  are, 
shall  we  count  them  astronomical  years  of 
365^4  days,  or  years  of  360  days,  such 
as  were  used  in  Babylon  ?  The  only  years 
whose  length  is  given  in  the  Bible  are  of 
360  days — twelve  months  of  30  days  each. 
Gen.  vii,  11,  viii,  3-4;  Rev.  xi,  2-3,  xii,  6, 
xiii,  5.  It  seems  not  unreasonable  to  take 
the  period  designed  as  360  days.  In  that 
case  the  483d  year  from  445  B.  C.  is  32 
A.  D-i  the  date  of  the  Crucifixion. 

Sir  Robert  Judge  Anderson,  in  The 
Coming  Prince,  by  a  careful  and  learned 
calculation,  fixes  the  date  for  the  termina- 
tion of  the  four  hundred  and  eighty-three 
years  as  Sunday,  April  6,  32  A.  D.,  which 
in  his  opinion  was  the  day  on  which  our 
Lord  made  His  triumphal  entry  into  Jeru- 
salem. Into  the  niceties  of  the  calculation 
it  is  not  necessary  to  enter  here.  It  is 
sufficient  to  say  that  if  the  483  years  begin 
with  the  20th  year  of  Artaxerxes,  they 
find  their  termination  somewhere  during 

143 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

the  mortal  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  or  in  close 
connection  therewith. 

But  while  this  conclusion  will  not  be 
contravened  by  the  destructive  criticism, 
that  system  will  not  allow  the  premise.  To 
accept  445  B.  C.  or  any  date  near  it  as  the 
tcniiiiius  a  quo,  would  be  to  admit  the 
predictive  character  of  the  Seventy  Weeks' 
prophecy.  ''All  views,"  writes  a  critic, 
''presented  by  those  who  hold  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  contain  their 
own  refutation,  for  the  termini  a  quo  must 
be  later  than  the  period  of  the  prophet, 
who  would  have  died  many  years  before 
the  commencement  of  the  490  years,"* 
that  is  to  say,  no  prophet  can  predict  what 
is  to  happen  after  his  death.  His  pro- 
phecies must  always  be  of  something  past 
and  gone ! 

As  prediction  is  excluded  by  the  critical 
theory,  some  other  date  is  sought,  some 
date  so  early  that  the  483d  year  thereafter 
will  fall  before  163  B.  C,  the  time  of  the 
conjectured  composition  of  Daniel.     Fur- 

*Hastings'  Diet,  of  Bible  s.  v.  Daniel. 
M4 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

thermore,  some  person  who  might  be 
called  "Messiah  the  Prince"  must  have 
been  cut  ojff  prior  to  163  B.  C.  Two  or 
three  persons  who  met  violent  deaths  in 
the  troubled  times  preceding  163  B.  C. 
have  been  suggested,  of  wdiom  the  high 
priest  Onias,  who  was  murdered  in  171 
B.  C,  best  suits  the  description.  He  was 
not  the  Messiah  of  Jewish  expectation, 
but  as  Messiah  means  the  Anointed  One 
and  as  Onias  had  been  anointed,  in  com- 
mon with  all  priests,  he  could  be  made  to 
fit  the  exigency.  Nor  was  he  precisely  a 
prince,  but  as  the  high  priest  in  Jerusalem 
then  exercised  civil  power,  the  title  was 
not  wholly  misplaced.  Though  answer- 
ing the  description  imperfectly,  he  is  the 
most  available  person. 

But  the  decree  of  Cyrus  was  not  a 
commandment  to  rebuild  Jerusalem.  The 
terms  of  Cyrus'  decree  are  before  us 
(Ezra  i,  1-4).  No  casuistry  can  make 
that  decree  other  than  a  permission  to  re- 
vive Jewish  worship  by  the  erection  of 
the  temple.     The  building  of  the  temple 

145 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

involved  no  risk  to  Persian  suzerainty, 
but  to  attribute  to  Cyrus  such  an  act  as 
permission  to  a  people,  whose  loyalty  was 
untried,  to  build  a  walled  town  remote 
from  Babylon  and  contiguous  to  his  pow- 
erful rival  Egypt,  is  to  make  Cyrus  a  sim- 
pleton. However  grateful  the  Hebrews 
might  be  for  their  deliverance,  they  longed 
for  independence.  They  had  yielded  to 
Egyptian  blandishments  before;  they  had 
no  sympathy  with  Persian  heathenism, 
and  depressed  and  feeble  though  they 
were,  they  felt  themselves  superior  to  all 
other  people.  Afterward,  when  the  power 
of  Egypt  was  broken  by  Cyrus'  son  Cam- 
byses,  and  Egypt  itself  was  a  Persian 
province,  and  the  Jews'  loyalty  to  Persia 
had  been  tested  through  many  years,  it 
became  safe  to  allow^  Jerusalem's  wall  to 
rise.    It  was  not  safe  in  Cyrus'  time. 

Now  as  to  the  483  years.  From  536 
B.  C.  to  171  B.  C.  is  365  years — not  483! 
This  is  missing  the  mark  by  a  great  dis- 
tance. That  pious  and  learned  Jew  of  the 
critics'  imagination  was  a  singularly  bad 
arithmetician. 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

This  absurdity  is  too  much,  and  so 
seven  weeks,  i.e.,  49  years,  are  deducted 
from  the  483,  making  434  years  to  be 
fitted  in  between  the  decree  of  Cyrus  and 
the  death  of  Onias.  Still  a  disparity  ex- 
ists. ''The  chief  objection,"  says  Driver, 
"to  this  interpretation  is  that  the  period 
from  538  to  172  is  366  years  only,  not 

434- 

This  is  indeed  a  serious  objection,  but 
not  the  chief  one.  The  fatal  objection  to 
all  such  strained  devices  is  that  the  decree 
for  rebuilding  the  city  was  given  by  Ar- 
taxerxes  about  445  B.  C,  and  by  no  one 
else  and  at  no  other  time. 

A  scheme  still  wilder  is  to  make  Jere- 
miah's prophecy  of  the  seventy  years'  cap- 
tivity (Jer.  xxix,  10)  the  "commandment 
to  restore,"  etc.  This  juggles  in  the  434 
years,  but  has  nothing  else  to  recommend 
it,  and  besides  it  acknowledges  predictive 
prophecy  which  the  critics  deny.  Lame  as 
the  Cyrus-decree-explanation  is,  it  must 
be  adhered  to  rather  than  admit  that  Jere- 
miah or  any  one  else  ever  predicted  any- 
thing. 

147 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Over  against  these  contrivances  to  in- 
validate the  prophecy  set  the  prophecy  it- 
self. 

Dan.  ix,  25.  "From  the  going  forth  of 
the  commandment  to  rebuild  Jerusalem 
unto  Messiah,  shall  be  seven  weeks  and 
sixty-two  weeks ;  the  streets  shall  be  built 
again  and  the  wall  in  troublous  times. 
And  after  sixty-two  weeks  shall  Messiah 
be  cut  off.  And  the  people  of  the  prince 
that  shall  come  shall  destroy  the  city  and 
the  sanctuary." 

The  meaning  appears  to  be  that  it  will 
be  forty-nine  years  before  the  street  and 
w^all  would  be  finished;  that  434  years 
after  that  Alessiah  would  come ;  that  after 
that  the  people  of  some  prince  would  de- 
stroy city  and  sanctuary. 

Now,  what  happened?  The  w^ork  of 
rebuilding  and  fortifying  was  much  im- 
peded by  envious  neighbors.  That  it  was 
forty-nine  years  before  the  work  was  com- 
plete is  very  probable.  Then  434  years 
after — somewhere  between  A.  D.  26  and 
32 — the  Redeemer  of  mankind  appeared. 

148 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

After  that,  the  Roman  prince  sent  an 
army  which  utterly  destroyed  the  city  and 
temple  of  Jerusalem. 

That  destruction  was  complete.  The 
temple  was  not  simply  polluted,  as  it  was 
by  Antiochus  Epiphanes — it  was  de- 
stroyed. It  has  not  been  reared  in  Jeru- 
salem since.  The  Jewish  ritual  was  ended. 
It  has  never  been  restored,  and  it  never  can 
be.  It  has  had  no  priesthood  since  Jeru- 
salem fell ;  for  every  son  of  Aaron  was 
slain.  There  can  be  no  more  priestly 
sacrifices,  nor  atonement  by  high  priest; 
for  in  that  dire  disaster,  the  older  cove- 
nant passed  away.  Its  vitality  and  valid- 
ity had  ceased  when  the  Lamb  of  God  was 
offered  upon  Calvary ;  but  for  forty  years 
the  outward  shell  remained.  That  shell 
was  removed  in  the  destruction  of  Jeru- 
salem, 70  A.  D. 

It  was  fitting  that  these  events,  so  mo- 
mentous to  Jews  and  Gentiles,  should  be 
predicted.  What  spirit  is  that  which 
struggles  to  bewilder  and  befog  the  minds 
of  men  concerning  them  ? 

149 


THE  TESTIMONY  OF  OUR    LORD 

In  the  solemn  discourse  given  by  our 
Saviour  concerning  the  fate  of  Jerusalem 
and  the  end  of  the  world,  He  said,  "When 
ye  shall  see  the  abomination  of  desolation 
spoken  of  by  Daniel  the  prophet,  stand  in 
the  holy  place  *  *  *  (Matt,  xxiv, 
15;  Mark  xiii,  14). 

Two  facts  bearing  upon  this  enquiry  are 
here  declared.  First,  that  Daniel  was  a 
prophet,  and,  secondly,  that  the  abomina- 
tion of  desolation  had  not  yet  appeared. 
That  abomination,  then,  was  not  some- 
thing connected  with  Antiochus  Epi- 
phanes,  who  had  been  dead  nearly  200 
years.  Whatever  it  was,  it  still  lay  in  the 
future.  The  abomination  of  desolation  is 
foretold  in  the  prophecy  of  the  Seventy 
Weeks.     (Dan.  ix,  27.) 

This  decides  the  whole  matter.  Daniel 
was  a  true  prophet.  He  did  predict. 
Antiochus  was  not  the  terminus  ad  quern, 
and  the  critics'  theory  is  exploded. 

150 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

But,  strange  to  say,  the  critics  are  un- 
abashed. They  now  proceed  to  evade  the 
statement  of  Christ  Himself. 

One  critic  says  that  our  Lord  was  not 
raising,  nor  settHng  the  date  of  the  book 
of  Daniel,  that  ''it  would  not  have  been 
good  pedagogy  to  raise  it."*  And  that 
''the  latest  critical  opinion,"  etc.  Very 
well,  we  are  not  enquiring  what  the  critics 
think,  but  what  our  Lord  said.  Let  it  be 
granted  that  Christ  was  not  discussing 
the  date  of  Daniel — nobody  ever  said  He 
was.  What  He  said  was  that  the  abomi- 
nation spoken  of  by  Daniel  was  yet  to 
appear.  Then  it  could  not  have  appeared 
in  the  time  of  Antiochus,  and  the  Seventy 
Weeks'  prediction  was  not  accomplished 
in  that  Syrian  tyrant.  Our  Lord  endorses 
Daniel  as  a  prophet,  and  says  that  Dan- 
iel's prediction  was  yet  to  be  fulfilled. 
This  shatters  the  critics'  theory  that  the 
Book  of  Daniel  was  written  after  the 
events. 


^Hom.  Review,  July,  1904. 
151 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Is  there  not  something  disingenuous  in 
this  talk  about  "good  pedagogy"  and  "ac- 
commodation to  the  prejudices  of  one's 
hearers" — something  of  the  cuttlefish  de- 
vice to  cloud  the  subject  with  ink?  Sup- 
pose, if  you  will,  that  our  Lord  did  not 
think  it  worth  while  to  disabuse  His  hear- 
ers of  their  error,  must  He  go  out  of  His 
way  to  confirm  that  error  ?  There  was  no 
necessity  for  mentioning  Daniel  at  all,  un- 
less Daniel  was  a  true  prophet. 

Other  attempts  to  evade  our  Lord's 
pronouncement  are,  that  He  did  not  know 
of  what  He  spoke,  or  that  He  did  not  say 
anything  about  Daniel — that  the  passage 
is  an  invention  of  the  Evangelists  or  a 
distorted  report  of  something  else,  and  so 
forth. 

To  what  painful  tergiversations  a  false 
theory  compels  its  advocates !  How  much 
easier  and  simpler — as  well  as  more 
straightforward  and  reverent — is  the 
truth ! 


152 


"WHY  SPEAKEST  THOU  IN 
PARABLES?" 

It  may  be  asked  why  the  prophecies  in 
Daniel  are  obscure?  Why,  if  God  chose 
to  reveal  the  future,  should  He  not  give 
dates  and  names  and  all  accessories,  so  as 
to  forbid  the  possibility  of  error?  In  re- 
ply it  may  be  said  that  all  prophecy  is 
veiled,  the  visions  of  Daniel  no  more  than 
the  predictions  of  other  seers.  In  some 
respects  they  are  plainer  than  other  pro- 
phecies. 

One  obvious  reason  why  prophecy  is 
veiled  is,  lest  its  friends  be  tempted  to  en- 
deavor to  fulfill  it^  or  its  foes  to  defeat  it. 
But  there  is  another  reason.  It  is  found 
in  our  Lord's  significant  words,  Matt,  xiii, 
10-13,  "To  you  it  is  given  to  know  the 
mysteries  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  but 
to  them  it  is  not  given.  Therefore  I  speak 
to  them  in  parables,  because  they,  seeing, 
see    not,    and    hearing,    they    hear    not, 

153 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL  ? 

neither  do  they  understand."  That  is, 
the  possibiHty  of  erring  will  not  be  taken 
and  ought  not  be  taken  from  a  moral  be- 
ing. j\Ian  is  free  to  choose  good  or  evil. 
Obedience  cannot  be  forced,  else  it  has  no 
moral  character.  So  also  opinion,  belief 
must  not  be  forced,  else  it  has  no  moral 
character.  A  mathematical  demonstra- 
tion is  believed  because  we  cannot  help 
ourselves.  The  greatest  scoundrel  and  the 
greatest  saint  believe  it  alike.  There  is  no 
merit  in  believing.  They  cannot  avoid 
it.  So,  too,  an  argument  may  be  so 
logical  as  to  force  conviction,  and  here 
again  there  is  no  freedom  of  choice  and  no 
moral  quality  in  the  mental  act.  But  re- 
ligious truth  cannot  be  given  in  that  way. 
Wq  must  not  be  forced  to  receive  it — a 
way  is  left  open — crooked  and  wrong — 
which  we  may  take  if  we  wish.  No  man 
is  forced  to  take  the  wrong  way — but 
there  it  is. 

The  whole  Bible  is  a  parable  in  this 
sense.  Revelation  does  not  come  with 
mathematical  exactness  nor  with  logical 

154 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

precision.  All  avenues  to  error  are  not 
blocked.  Room  for  free  choice — even 
wrong  choice — is  left.  This  is  a  danger- 
ous power  which  man  possesses,  but  it  is 
a  splendid  power.  It  separates  man  from 
the  brute,  and  lifts  him  immeasurably 
higher — into  a  moral  kingdom. 

The  wrong  way  in  act  or  opinion  is  not 
the  straighter  nor  the  plainer  that  men 
should  follow  it ;  but  every  day  men  follow 
the  wrong  and  crooked  way  in  their  ac- 
tions to  their  own  hurt  and  the  hurt  of 
others.  In  opinion,  a  conceit  of  learning, 
a  desire  to  be  in  the  forefront  of  discov- 
ery, so  powerful  a  stimulus  in  these  days 
of  startling  scientific  research,  an  ambition 
for  notoriety;  an  impatience  of  old  truth 
because  it  is  old — these  may  dull  our  sight 
and  turn  our  feet  aside.  We  are  free ;  we 
are  not  compelled  to  err,  but  we  are  not 
hindered. 

And  so  parable  and  prophecy  are  ob- 
scure to  some,  but  not  to  those  to  whom 
it  is  given  to  know  the  mysteries  of  the 
kingdom.     Or  if  unfulfilled  prophecy  is 

155 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

still  obscure,  that  is  what  we  are  to  ex- 
pect. We  can  wait.  The  Day  will  de- 
clare it. 

No  man  who  recognizes  his  standing  as 
a  free  agent  ought  to  find  fault  with  the 
Revelation  on  account  of  its  lack  of 
mathematical  precision.  That  lack  leaves 
him  free  to  err  if  he  prefers  to  do  so.  He 
is  not  forced  to  take  the  correct  view.  He 
is  a  man  and  not  a  brute. 

Sinless,  the  cattle  on   the   meadows  munch  their 

corn ; 
But  I  would  be  a  man — I  serve,  because  I  will, 
And  not  because  I  must. 

He  who  demands  a  Revelation  which 
shall  preclude  every  chance  of  mistake, 
makes  a  demand  which  cannot  and  which 
ought  not  be  granted.  He  is  demanding 
that  he  be  reduced  to  the  condition  of  an 
intellectual  animal  and  deprived  of  his 
manhood.  Freedom  must  be  left  to  us, 
even  though  it  involve  the  possibility  of 
error. 

Even  with  the  abundant  proof  of  Dan- 
iel ;  with  the  distressing  inadequacy  of  the 
156 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

so-called  arguments  against  it;  with  the 
continuous  accomplishment  of  some  of  its 
prophecies  at  the  present  time;  with  the 
striking  fulfillment  of  its  predictions  of 
Messiah,  the  Prince;  with  the  solemn 
repetition  of  one  of  its  predictive  warn- 
ings by  our  Saviour  himself;  men  are 
found  who  lift  up  their  voice  and  deny 
this  Revelation. 

There  is  not  a  book  in  Scripture  against 
which  similar  assaults  may  not  be  made. 
Only  a  few  remain  against  which  similar 
assaults  have  not  already  been  made. 

Perhaps  this  is  that  Falling  Away  of 
which  the  New  Testament  forewarns  us. 
A  "falling  away" — not  an  attack  by  ex- 
ternal foes — but  an  eclipse  of  faith  within 
the  nominal  Church  of  God.  If  so,  no 
w^onder  many  are  misled. 

But  they  need  not  be.  A  judicial  indif- 
ference to  the  unproved  assertions  of  those 
who  claim  to  be  the  only  competent  guides 
in  this  matter,  and  a  fair,  frank  and  full 
investigation  of  all  claims  and  counter- 
claims, will  save  any  man  from  mistake. 

157 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

We  know  well — we  are  in  no  danger  of 
forgetting  it — that  the  critics  maintain 
that  they  are  experts,  and  that  all  men 
ought  to  3neld  to  their  opinion;  and  that 
any  Hebraist^  who  refuses  to  do  so,  is  ipso 
facto  not  an  expert.  But  we  remember 
that  there  were  certain  persons — and  they, 
too,  were  expert  Hebraists — who  said, 
"Have  any  of  the  rulers  or  of  the  Phari- 
sees believed  on  Him?" 

Let  it  be  granted  that  the  critics  are  ex- 
perts. There  are  other  experts  who  do  not 
agree  with  them,  and  all  experts  are  in 
danger  of  becoming  victims  of  their  own 
theories;  but  in  a  matter  of  this  kind  a 
bare  ''diximus"  by  any  experts  does  not 
decide  the  question.  If  the  critics  are  per- 
suaded that  the  Book  of  Daniel  is  not 
exilic,  what  reasons  have  persuaded 
them?  Where  are  those  reasons?  A 
more  pitiful  array  than  those  given  in  the 
preceding  pages  it  would  be  difficult  to 
conceive.  And  yet  these  are  all.  Can  it 
be  true  that  scholarship  deprives  a  man 
of  the  reasoning  faculty  ? 

158 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  upholders 
of  the  genuineness  and  authenticity  of 
Daniel  object  to  criticism.  Any  sincere 
criticism,  higher  or  lower,  from  Jew,  In- 
fidel or  Christian,  is  gladly  welcomed  by 
those  who  hold  that  the  Bible  is  God's 
blessed  gift  to  man.  To  learn  the  truth 
about  it  and  the  truth  in  it  is  the  desire  of 
all  Christian  men.  Any  light,  even 
though  it  comiC  from  the  miasmatic 
morass  of  rationalistic  speculation,  will  be 
welcomed  and  used,  but  when  the  alleged 
light  is  nothing  but  offensive  and  stifling 
smoke,  blinding  the  eyes  and  dulling  the 
senses  of  all  who  come  under  its  influence, 
what  good  thing  can  be  said  of  it? 

Not  a  solitary  charge  against  the  au- 
thenticity of  Daniel  has  been  sustained. 
And  yet  these  charges  are  repeated  in  the 
ears  of  Divinity  students,  and  no  hint  is 
given  of  their  inadequacy.  The  proofs 
for  Daniel  are  omitted  or  ingeniously  be- 
fogged. Historians  whose  wTitings  sus- 
tain Daniel — and  they  are  all  the  historians 
who  touch  these  matters — are  discredited. 

159 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

A  royal  edict,  whose  terms  are  plainly  in- 
dicated, is  moved  a  hundred  years  back- 
ward from  its  place  in  defiance  of  all  laws, 
literary  or  critical  or  historical.  The  in- 
tegrity or  the  wisdom  of  Jesus  the  Christ 
is  impugned.  And  all  this  is  done  in  a 
blind  infatuation  for  the  fancies  of  some 
Germans  who  have  set  themselves  to 
overturn  the  Gospel  of  the  Son  of  God. 

The  air  of  assurance  with  which  these 
theories  are  presented,  and  the  assumption 
of  superior  scholarship,  fortified  as  they 
are  by  lists  of  Teutonic  names,  impress  the 
minds  of  the  unwary.  But  when  the  stu- 
dent examines  the  arguments  adduced  to 
support  the  theories,  he  discovers  the  fal- 
lacy of  the  entire  scheme.  Beyond  guesses 
and  hypotheses  there  is  really  nothing;  so 
that  when  he  meets,  as  he  probably  will  in 
the  critical  writings,  minatory  intimations 
that  if  these  fancies  are  not  accepted,  the 
Christian  religion  will  be  in  peril,  a  feeling 
of  indignation  rises  in  him — indignation 
against  what  seems  to  be  pretense  playing 
upon  ignorance  and  innocence.  And  then 
harsh  language  is  the  natural  sequel. 

i6o 


DID  DANIEL  AVRITE  DANIEL? 

But  the  occasion  really  calls  for  sorrow, 
sympathy  and  pity.  We  have  come  upon 
one  of  those  delusions  to  which  the  minds 
of  men — even  intelligent  and  good  men — 
are  exposed.  The  critics  assert  their 
eagerness  for  truth  and  there  is  no  reason 
to  doubt  their  sincerity.  Good  men  have 
often  been  deluded.  History  presents 
many  occasions  where  scholars  have  been 
led  into  foolishness.  The  heresies  of  the 
early  Christian  centuries,  the  learned 
vapidities  of  the  schoolmen,  the  Salem 
w^itchcraft  frenzies  are  instances.  Nor 
need  we  confine  ourselves  to  the  remote 
past,  with  its  supposed  immaturity  of 
thought.  To-day  we  see  thousands  of 
persons  embracing  Eddyism,  Theosophy 
and  similar  fantastic  cults.  x\nd  the  vic- 
tims of  all  these  follies  are  sincere. 

The  destructive  critics  will,  no  doubt, 
resent  being  classed  with  such  crack- 
brained  people ;  but  why  call  them  ''crack- 
brained"?  By  some  means  they  have 
been  led  into  a  foolish  theory.  They  then 
search  for  facts  to  sustain  their  theory. 

i6i 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

If  no  facts  are  forthcoming,  they  invent 
hypotheses  and  count  them  as  facts,  and 
they  ignore  adverse  evidence.  That  is  to 
say,  they  do  as  the  critics  do.  In  general 
culture,  in  special  scholarship,  in  mental 
poise  outside  their  pet  delusion,  they  can 
match  the  critics  man  for  man.  More- 
over, they  profess,  like  the  critics,  great 
respect  for  the  Christian  religion,  and, 
though  they  find  it  necessary  to  discard 
sortie  things  in  the  Bible,  they  mutilate  the 
Book  less  than  the  critics  do. 

The  melancholy  history  of  human  error 
should  lead  every  thoughtful  man  seri- 
ously to  consider  the  warning,  ''Take  heed 
that  ye  be  not  deceived."  Never  is  de- 
lusion more  imminent  than  in  a  time  of 
high  intellectual  conceit.  "Let  him  that 
thinketh  he  standeth  take  heed  lest  he 
fall." 

There  is  predictive  prophecy.  The 
critics'  denial  does  not  disprove  it. 

"In  the  last  days  perilous  times  shall 
come.  Men  shall  be  proud,  boasters,  blas- 
phemers    *     H«     *     having    a    form    of 

162 


DID  DANIEL  WRITE  DANIEL? 

godliness  but  denying  the  power  thereof 
*  *  *  ever  learning  and  never  able  to 
come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth." 

There  shall  arise  false  prophets,  who 
shall  deceive  many,  even,  if  it  were  pos- 
sible, the  very  elect. 


163 


INDEX 


Alexander  the  Great loi,  129 

Antiochus  Epiphanes 122,  127,  128 

Artaxerxes 140 

Baruch 73,  96 

Belshazzar 19,  22,  28 

Berosus 22 

Cambyses 30 

Carchemish 36 

Chaldeans 57 

Cyrus 52,  145 

Darius  the  Mede 20,  52,  90 

Ecclesiasticus 74 

Evil-Merodach 28 

Ezekiel 91 

Ezra 75,96 

Four  Empires 124 

Gobr>'as  . 30,  57 

Greek  Empire 125,  129 

Greek  Words 20,  41 

Haggai        70 

Hagiographa 82 

Herodotus 58 

Isaiah 137 

Jehoiakim 35 

Jeremiah 19,  34,  147 

165 


INDEX 

Jerusalem 102,  140,  149 

Josephus 100 

Josiah 36 

Maccabees 97 

Malachi 70 

INIegiddo 36 

Messiah i37 

Nabonadius 25, 30 

Nebuchadnezzar' 65,  107 

Necho 35 

Nehemiah 140 

NerigHssar 29 

Nitocris 3^ 

OniasIII H5 

Persia 125 

Porphyry. •      ^^ 

Prophets S2 

Prophecy ii5,  122 

Revelation ii7,  i54 

Rome 125 

Seleucidae  ...       130 

Standard  Inscription •    •    108 

Weeks i34 

Year 35,  142 

Zechariah 70,  i37 


166 


Date  Due 

/^ATN^^ 

V 

^ 

f) 

BS1555.4  .W74 

Did  Daniel  write  Daniel?  :  the 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00076  1827 


